On August 16, China Unicom’s mixed-ownership reform and restructuring plan was unveiled.

China Unicom (600050), an A-share listed company under China Unicom Group, released a mixed-ownership reform plan. Four Internet giants, including Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, and JD.com, as well as a number of vertical industry companies and two funds, with a total consideration of 78 billion yuan.

, becoming a strategic investor in China Unicom.

For ordinary employees, China Unicom also hopes to establish a market-oriented mechanism that shares corporate interests and risks, including establishing an equity incentive mechanism, performance-oriented, and optimizing the internal salary distribution mechanism and restraint mechanism.

According to China Unicom's mixed-ownership reform plan, core employees will be granted no more than approximately 848 million restricted shares in the first phase, and the funds raised will not exceed approximately 3.213 billion yuan.

According to China Unicom, the 848 million restricted shares planned to be granted to core employees will be priced at RMB 3.79 per share.

There are many difficulties in the reform of state-owned enterprises, including worries about the loss of state-owned assets, who can hold employee shares, and how much they can hold. These issues are very complex. This time, China Unicom took employees into consideration, which was also a major breakthrough. Later, the National Development and Reform Commission promoted the second

The first and third batch of mixed-ownership reform of state-owned enterprises may take employee stock ownership into consideration.

"The mixed reform promoted by the National Development and Reform Commission is a project system. It is carried out around projects and has less resistance to promotion. The reform of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission must consider all aspects. In addition, the mixed reform promoted by the National Development and Reform Commission comes in waves. This time China Unicom's mixed reform is not small.

The National Development and Reform Commission also hopes that waves of plans will be developed online to eventually achieve the goal," Li Jin said.

This time involving employee stock ownership is a highlight, but I don’t know whether it can implement survival of the fittest. High labor costs are a major pain point for state-owned enterprises.

It is worth mentioning that the price set by China Unicom’s employee stock ownership plan is much lower than the stock price before the suspension. It is still unclear the specific logic of this price setting.

However, this substantial discount may also provide ideas for other central enterprises to implement mixed reform.