According to recent reports, the National Development and Reform Commission is now hard at work with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on guidelines aimed at addressing the overcapacity problems dogging China's steel, iron, cement, shipbuilding and automobile industries.

Authorities and policymakers have known for years about the overabundance of capacity building up within pillar industries. But despite periodic calls for restructuring and consolidation, these issues have never been entirely resolved.

In a pure market economy, companies with too much capacity and too little productivity would quickly be eliminated. However, with local authorities calling the shots on economic activity within their jurisdictions, scores of inefficient and unneeded companies continue to limp along thanks to their political connections.

Rather than working on guidelines to manage companies in overloaded industries, the central government should work on managing local authorities. Specifically, it needs to get regional administrators to stop protecting superfluous enterprises.

The author is Yu Muzhan, a commentator.