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This study treats the strategy of Chinese SOEs to transfer the social functions of heating, power, water, and estate (HPWET) as a quasi-natural experiment and utilizes the staggered difference-in-differences (DID) approach to investigate the impact of removing policy burdens (RPB) on the environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance of SOEs. The regression analysis indicates that RPB significantly enhances the ESG performance of SOEs.