Research On Competition Reform Of Chinese Railway Industry

The railway industry is the "last bastion of China's planned economy", how could we introject it in the face of the international tide of deregulation and reconstruction reform of the railway industry? Choices which are fit for special Chinese national conditions and special railway conditions have become the focus of resolving the railway problems. Based on the existing studies, scholars have put forward many concrete schemes such as "Horizontal Segmentation", "Vertical Segmentation" and "Separation of Railway Infrastructure and Operations". These ideas have played a positive role in the aspects of breaking monopoly and introducing competition in the railway industry. However, this paper believes that it is unscientific to carry out the specific operations blindly under the premise of the unclarity of reform direction of China railway. Therefore, based on competition path which railway reform should choose, this paper inspects network competition, business separation and substitute competition to explore railway reform models with Chinese characteristics.At this stage, the introduction of competition mechanism to Chinese railway industry has the characteristics of urgency and difficulty. By comparing the above three forms of competition, the paper argues that they have their own advantages and disadvantages: network competition is the fiercest, but it is faced with many obstacles such as limited resources of railway network as well as high entry barriers; business separation can maintain integration efficiency of railway network and introduce competition at the same time, but it has a high deal cost because of the problems of transport scheduling, access costs and line construction; substitute competition is a kind of indirect way, it can also regulate and constrain the bad behavior of enterprises in railway transport market, realizes the economic efficiency, but it can not fundamentally solve competitive power shortage problem of the railway industry itself under the protection of the dual monopoly. Therefore, China's railway reform should be unique to Chinese national conditions and railway conditions. The reform models should be implemented "the main points and the minor ones", that is, taking the reform path which takes business separation as the main point and substitute competition as the minor one. We can use the two forms of competition to achieve the best effect; only in this way can we solve the inherent drawbacks of the railway and achieve the goals of Chinese railway reform.