Workers at a maintenance factory for steam locomotives in Fuxin, located in China's northeast Liaoning Province.

Salaries of executives at China's largest state-owned enterprises (SOEs) will be directly linked to their performance on tests by the ruling Communist Party to assess their "party building" efforts, state media said on Tuesday.

President Xi Jinping has overseen a push to re-establish the party in Chinese business and institutions, stating that a "key few" loyal and talented officials should play a greater role in leading the country.

These efforts, often described as efforts to strengthen party discipline, dovetail with Xi's war on graft, a multi-year campaign to target offenders at all levels.

New rules released on Sunday will create for the first time a "system of responsibility" to ensure appointed executives are carrying out work to promote party ideology in China's national-level SOEs, the party's official People's Daily newspaper reported.