China's business community eager to enter political world

China's entrepreneurs are becoming more eager to play a role in politics, as the elite replace traditional workers as the dominant force in private business, state media said yesterday.

Nearly one third of private business owners would like to get a seat in either law-making or advisory assemblies, according to a recent survey carried out by the Communist Party and other agencies, the China Daily reported.

It did not give details about how many people took part in the survey, or how representative they were.

The paper linked the growing political ambitions of the nation's businesspeople to what appeared to be a big shift in the composition of private entrepreneurs over the past few years.

In 2004, 57.9 percent of entrepreneurs were former workers, farmers or service sector employees, but that percentage has now dropped to 26.7 percent, the paper said.

On the other hand, 67.4 percent of Chinese entrepreneurs today are former government officials, state-owned enterprise managers and technical professionals, up from 33.8 percent in 2004, it reported.

"That means the make-up of private business ownership is becoming elite-oriented," said Bao Yujun (保育鈞), director of the All-China Association for Private Business Studies.

The legislative and advisory assemblies that Chinese entrepreneurs increasingly hope to join are widely considered toothless bodies with severely limited say over actual policy-making.

Even so, membership does carry some status and could give private business better access to people in the Chinese political system who wield the real influence, such as high-ranking members of the Communist Party.