Nearly 5,000 state-owned enterprises, including some centrally-administered ones, went bankrupt each year from 2002 to 2009, a former state assets watchdog head disclosed here Tuesday.

Li Rongrong, former director of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, made the remarks at the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2010, also known as the Summer Davos, in north China' s port city of Tianjin.

"The size of a company doesn't matter when it comes to the bankruptcy issue," Li said. "A big company with poor management can fail as well."

He said the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Enron Corp. made him realize even companies with a modern enterprise system may go bankrupt, said the official, who just stepped down from office last August.