A deep-water oil drilling platform the "Island Innovator" is seen at a port in Zhoushan, east China's Zhejiang province on September 26, 2017.
China has set targets to increase the number of mergers in nine sectors to enhance big enterprises' global competitiveness.
Authorities rolled out a guideline aimed at encouraging mergers to adjust industrial structure and resolve overcapacity problems that have hobbled some sectors.
Among the nine sectors, the guideline will increase market dominance of top ten auto makers to 90 percent by 2015.
Meantime, the guideline aims to cut a large number of steel producing enterprises and phase out outdated capacity through mergers.
Firms in the rare earth business will also see their numbers slashed and business concentrated to a few large enterprises.
The mergers will involve some 900 or about half of the companies currently listed on the Chinese stock markets.