On the afternoon of April 1, 2010, LI Rongrong, Chairman of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (SASAC), Tsinghua SEM’s Advisory Board member, delivered a speech themed “State-owned Assets Management” at the School.

Before the speech, Dean Professor QIAN Yingyi, Assistant Dean Professor WANG Jun and Professor NING Xiangdong, Director of the Center for Government Governance, met with LI Rongrong.

Dean QIAN Yingyi opened the speech with an introduction of LI Rongrong, thanking him for constant support for Tsinghua SEM. He also reported about the success in the School’s curriculum revision, which had been developed in accordance with the suggestion from LI Rongrong.

In the speech, LI Rongrong talked about effective corporate governance, the economic, social and political responsibility of state-owned enterprises as well as the improvement in general ethics among Chinese people.

LI Rongrong stressed the importance of state-owned enterprises under significant circumstances by referring to Sichuan earthquake, security and communication support of the Olympic Games and the National Day Parade. He also refuted “the absolute necessity of privatization” by citing the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

There was a Q&A session after the speech. LI Rongrong answered questions from SEM’s students. When asked about the introduction of Economic Value Added (EVA) performance metric into state-owned enterprises, LI Rongrong said, central enterprises need to pay attention to revenue and return on capital. EVA metric is indispensible for the management of state-owned assets.