On The Regulation In China's Electricity Industry And Its Reform

Reform of control over natural monopoly industry is one of the hot topics in structural reform of the economy in China nowadays. Power industry is a basic sector of national economy and one of the key public utilities, and therefore, the effective government control over power industry tends to be especially important. This thesis consists of five parts of the foreword, three main chapters, and the conclusion. Chapter One is a general introduction to government control. Firstly, the author of this thesis points out that the government control is a debatable definition. Demand for government control mainly derives from two major concerns of natural monopoly and outside character. The government control is normally divided into both economic control and social control, where the economic control mainly includes price control, market access and withdrawal control, investment control and quality control. The purpose of social control is to assure security and health of labor and consumers as well as environmental protection. Taking the developed countries for example, since 1980s, the economic control has been released gradually, while the social control has been strengthened continuously. Compared with the developed countries, the economic control in China is not so standardized, the control efficiency is low and the social control needs to be further promoted. In Chapter Two, the author firstly analyzes the demand for government control over power industry. It is pointed out that in the four main fields of the power industry concerning power generation, transmission, distribution and supply, the natural monopoly does not exist in the field of power production, i.e. the power generation, but really exists in the fields of both power transmission and distribution. Therefore, in general, power industry is the industry with natural monopoly. Besides, the power industry has obvious outside character, of which the positive factor is that the power industry plays a key role in promoting economic development, while the negative factor mainly refers to the environmental cost. It shows that the demand for government control really exists. The government control over power industry cover the following main concerns: Control over market structure of power industry; control over access to power industry, control over price regulation of power industry and control over environment of power industry. In view of development trend of government control over power industry in the developed countries, the power control mechanism has developed from direct control by the administrative departments of government to direction of specialized control. We will release the economic control in competition links (i.e. power generation and selling), reinforce economic control over monopoly links (i.e. power transmission and distribution), and strengthen social control over safety and environment protection as well as service quality. Chapter Three makes a brief review and analysis on development of power industry in our country since reform and opening, and the structural reform of power industry launched during the course of development. It points out defects and advantages of the existing power system, e.g. increasingly obvious structural defects of monopoly business management, inter-provincial market barriers that interfere with optimized configuration, and existing management mode that cannot meet development requirements. On such a basis, the author expounds general goal for structural reform of power control: We should not only break through monopoly and introduce competition, but also promote efficiency and reduce cost; we should perfect power pricing mechanism, optimize resources configuration, accelerate power development, and popularize national networking; and we will construct the power market system of healthy development under government control that is featured by separating government functions from enterprise activities, and fair competition and orderly opening. The main contents of the reform include: We will separate the functions of power plant from power network, divide power assets of the state power corporation in two business categories of power generation and power network; concerning power generation, we will transform or recombine the power generation assets of the state power...