[eznoonze]

It depends on whether the party considers your business useful to their rule or helpful in implementing their policies. For example, Wechat, Alipay, etc are all very useful.

Their policy is trickling down gradually.

They recently inserted Commissars into a list of Hong Kong real estate companies. So even non-mainland chinese companies are not immune.

[seanmcdirmid]

Commissars or just trade union representatives? If the latter, Microsoft China had that also, but it didn’t have much of an influence on the company. Commissars would be really strange since that is a role in the PLA.

[eznoonze]

Board of Director. The title of course is not called "Commissar", but they serve as a defacto one.

Some are public. Some hide their identities (but serve similar purpose). Secret ones usually are used in dealing with foreign entities (i.e. non-mainland). So you may not even know there is one except if you are in the top management.