economy - Mixed messages on selling off state assets

I have not been following the development on the sale of non-tradable shares in state-owned enterprises over the past few weeks all to close, but from this dispatch of Bloomberg I conclude that the financial authorities are as clueless as they were before:

"The country still needs to hold enough shares to absolutely or comparatively control pivotal companies after making all shares tradable,'' Shang Fulin, chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, said in a statement handed out ahead of a briefing in China today in Beijing today.

The confident start of the sales earlier this year seems to be gone, yet again. They should have continued, despite the expected structural downturn of the domestic stock exchanges. It could hardly have gone worser than it did.

Update: Hey, what a surprise, the Shenzhen and Shanghai stock exchanges ended up higher. Bad news for the long run anyway as the financial regulators move away from selling off the SOE's.