Do state-owned enterprises (SOEs) enjoy preferential treatments in China? This thesis extends the political economy approach of Branstetter and Feenstra (2002)[2] by introducing domestic tax rates in addition to import tariffs, and derive a corresponding government objective function that can be estimated using data on domestic tax rates, both de jure and de facto, respectively determined at the level of the central government and provincial governments. We find that for both the central and provincial governments, the political weights on SOEs are greater than those on FIEs. However, the magnitude of this difference varies across regions and various groups of provinces. In addition, withinregion/group, the political weights of the provincial governments on both SOEs and FIEs tend to be smaller than those of the central government, implying less governmental interference at the provincial governmental dimension.