An enterprise in China which, while being in fact privately owned, is officially registered as a public-owned organization, often as a Township and Village Enterprise (TVE) or an urban collective enterprise, and paying a management fee to the local government, or to the collective unit, in exchange for a state or collective licence for production and operation. This strategy was common in the early and mid-1990s and was gradually abandoned in favour of official private ownership after the non-public sector was recognized in 1997 as an ‘important part of the socialist economy’ by China’s Communist leaders.