This paper addresses how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) appoints leaders of the central state-owned enterprise (CSOE) and arranges their work transfer between party/government and CSOE posts. The empirical evidence of this paper is based on a dataset of vice-ministerial-level CSOE leaders from 1998 to 2014. The findings show that the CSOE leaders generally possess potentials for promotion because of their age advantage, and that most of them are well-educated and have joined the party in early adulthood. Different compositions of personal credentials reflect that the CCP has placed a greater emphasis on political screening in public-welfare CSOEs than in competitive CSOEs, and that the establishment of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission led to cadre specialization in CSOEs. Also, this paper confirms that the younger age they began to hold leadership posts, the shorter time period they served, and the Central Committee/Central Commission for Discipline Inspection membership can individually increase the likelihood of transferring to party/government posts. The results shed light on how the CCP would cultivate, train, and test the leaders by means of work arrangement under institutional constraints. The proposed idea of this paper - informal relations embedded in formal institutional rules - can provide a suitable explanation.