Privatization

Privatization is the transfer of something, such as a business, from the public sector to the private sector. In other words, it is a process in which a government ceases to own and\or control something, and the people begin to do so instead.

Methods
There are multiple methods of privatization, many of which involve the sale of shares, with different methods used to determine who may purchase them. Sometimes shares are offered to people with management positions in the business being privatized, sometimes the are sold freely on the stock market, and sometimes vouchers are distributed which may be used to purchase the shares.

Russia
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia entered a period of slow economic reform that included privatization through the distribution of vouchers which could used to purchase stock in enterprises that had previously been owned by the government. According to Boycko et al., "by September 1993, more than 20 percent of Russian industrial workers were employed by privatized firms." However, by 1999, unemployment had risen to 12 percent, there had been an increase in poverty, and the country's "GDP [had] fallen by about 40 percent" since the fall of the Soviet Union.

China
Privatization has been going on in China for some time now - a shareholding program was started by its government in 1993. Between 1994 and 2001, the number of industrial enterprises owned by the Chinese government almost halved from 15,533. During the same time, "the number of shareholding enterprises rapidly increased from less than 1,000 to nearly 6,000."