China's government should begin collecting dividends from its state-owned enterprises next year, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing the chairman of China's State-Owned Asset Supervision and Administration Commission. We will use the dividends to finance public needs and future industrial development," said Li Rongrong. "SOEs haven't paid dividends because before SOEs faced [financial] difficulties," Mr. Li said. "So we let them keep their returns to develop themselves." He said the number of state-owned enterprises and state-held enterprises fell to 127,000 from 159,000 between 2002 and 2005. The SASAC oversees 166 central government-controlled enterprises, including China's largest steelmaker, Shanghai Baosteel Group Corp., and Asia's largest oil refiner, Sinopec. The SOEs under its control had assets totaling 10.6 trillion yuan ($1.33 trillion) at the end of last year. Mr. Li said those 166 enterprises made profits of 627.6 billion yuan (78.45 billion US dollars) last year and paid 541.28 billion yuan (67.66 billion US dollars) in taxes.