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Why are perennially entrenched institutions so hard to reform? This article proposes a theory of institutional rebound based on China's reforms to break the three "ironinstitutions" in state-owned enterprises (SOEs). I argue that reforms triggered the rise of informal institutions,
which impeded further reforms and made old rules rebound. When SOE cadres had denser political connections, they actively manipulated the rules to maintain privileges. When managers and workers had fewer political resources, they used performative resistance to delay reforms and penalize reform
advocates. The pressure to complete reforms drove cadres to first target the powerless, replacing them with cronies, before having to move to the more powerful. The article combines in-depth interviews, secondary sources, and topical modeling of newspaper and journal articles across three
decades.

There is no doubt that the political economy of contemporary China has received significant attention, both in academic disciplines and in the real world. The role of the state in the economy and the relations between government and business actors have always been central concerns of classic social science works about China. There are, however, several crucial challenges in studying this topic. The complicated landscape of a multilayered, fragmented Chinese state and numerous state-owned, private, foreign, or mixed-type businesses has made it difficult to tease out their interactions and establish a comprehensive theoretical model. The fast-changing nature of state–market relations and their vast subnational and sectoral variation has often prevented scholars from generalizing those lessons beyond the case or issue area. Yet, among all these, the most daunting challenge is: How can studies of a particularly interesting phenomenon in China's political economy contribute to broader discussions of state–society relations, regime durability, and state-led development without losing respectable country expertise?