alistair Politicians have a dismal track record running successful companies (apart from in China)
Well that’s kind of the opposite way around. It’s that technocratic bosses, often engineers, become CEOs of these state-owned companies, and meanwhile get brought into the party apparatus, before eventually just making the leap to the Politburo.
If you look at the make-up of the top echelons of the Chinese government, a lot took this route.
Still, some of their SOEs are hugely inefficient in some areas.
