“The 1986 Enterprise Bankruptcy Law (1986 EBL) was adopted after many ineffective attempts to reform SOEs. It, in fact, neither effectively reformed SOEs as anticipated by the government, nor succeeded as a bankruptcy law in addressing the creditor-debtor problem. Lawmakers granted the government extensive roles in the bankruptcy of SOEs because of a misunderstanding of the nature and the goals of the bankruptcy regime when it was transplanted into China from other jurisdictions. They did not treat this law as a real bankruptcy law, but rather as an ‘SOE-rescuing law’ or ‘workers’ resettlement law’.This chapter introduces the background of government intervention in enterprise bankruptcies, the object dimension and temporal scope of this study, and research methodologies of this study: which includes empirical study, doctrinal approach and historical approach. It presents a general picture of the pending issue: whether the government is needed in addressing the bankruptcy problem of enterprises, especially listed companies in China with a socialist market economy.”