China's Telecommunications Industry Development And Institutional Change (1949-2000)

Telecommunications industry of China has experienced a long match full of hardships for 50 years since the founding of the People's Republic of China. Right now, both the development and the reform of the industry are coming to a turning point -to shift the industry structure from monopoly to competition and to set up the government regulation system. To challenge this historic moment, we must not only face the reality of the industry, but also trace back its arduous history. Thus I choose the topic "The Telecommunications Development and the System Change of China-From 1949 to 2000" as my doctoral dissertation.For more than 50 years, the government not only has played a key role, but also has dominated the telecom industry. Particularly since 1978, the extraordinary high-speed development of telecommunications was driven by the government industry policies; the radical change of the administrative system was triggered by the interest conflict of the government branches. Both of which originated from the central planned economy period (1949-1978); therefore, the research on the industry must be based on this part time of history. Based on this idea, after studying the structure and characteristics of the telecom industry and sketching out the long history in this area before the founding of P. R. China in the Introduction Chapter, the paper starts from the very beginning of the telecommunications development and the forming of the administrative system.Chapter 2 focuses on the long history for 30 years during the period of the central planned economy. It first reviews founding the Post-telecom Administrative System, (PTAS) which includes the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications (MPT) and the relationship with the other ministries and regional governments. Then the chapter deliberates the characteristics of the system and the developing polices. During this period, the rigid finance and the limited investment control by the central government (CG) made the post-telecom section not only lost chance to develop itself, but also hardly played its due role in the economy. Having analyzed the basic characteristics of PTAS and the characteristics of the government ministries as well as their interaction, the author reaches the conclusion that MPT's function was only limited to its interior administration rather than exercising its power over the whole industry. At the same time, the power shifted to the central government with the forming the central planned system. This Government Economic Administration Structure (GEAS) will have long and profound influence on the future telecom development.Chapter 3 reviews the central government's telecom industry policies formulated throughout 1980's in details. Enforcing the policies not only made the huge investment in the industry, resulting in the unconventionally rapid development, but also had enhanced the way of traditional investment mode, bearing the particular characteristics of high-input and low-efficiency. At the same time, development of telecommunications went far beyond the post-telecom section. The rapid expansion of both the public network and the private networks have had a great impact on GEAS.Chapter 4 studies the fundamental problem of GEAS in the local telecommunications development based on the regional private networks. The telecommunications network, especially local telephone cannot fully develop without being supported by the local governments, so the central government established the basic policies step by step that local governments should participate in more telecom construction. Local governments became more and more cared about their economic interests with the more investment; provincial administrative bureaus of MPT were showing more and more economic interests too, with the reforming of the MPT interior accounting system, which also further intensified its basic characters of integrating administration and management together The role changing of the two sides formed the base of the problem of the regional government administrative s...