Shareholders of low-profile Chinese property developer Tianjin Realty Development recently made news by voting to keep party politics out of the Shanghai-listed company's organizational structure. Such action has never been heard of before at any state-owned enterprise in the history of China's economic modernization.
What actually happened was that shareholders holding more than 36% of the company's stock rejected a motion to establish a Chinese Communist Party committee within the company. For the motion to pass, it needed two-thirds support, so the proposal failed by only a few percentage points.
