The economic reform in China can be described in two words: marketization and privatization. The public sector wasn't affected in the early part of the reform. Instead, there was a non-public sector appearing beside the public one. The whole reform can be considered as a process of market system and private sector infiltrating into the already existing public monopoly sector. The public utilities are the last fields left untouched by this reform.In general, a public utility is a private business organization that provides an essential commodity or service, such as railroad, telecommunication, electricity, gas, or water, to the public through a transport network. Since the public utilities have some special natures such as natural monopoly, they are usually held by the monopoly public sector. In the second half of the 20th century, with the development of science and the increase of demand, the scope of traditional monopoly industry was reduced. Meanwhile, the inefficiency of the monopoly public utility companies was exposed. Those reasons put forward a requirement of privatization in the public utilities. Many countries and parties different in ideology gradually accepted privatization as a new govern method. China was also affected by this trend.There were lots of good try of privatization in the Chinese public utilities with the government leading and the private sector participating. But those were only the beginning. In fact, there are some different between the privatization in developed countries and the one in China. The privatization in developed countries is a process of deregulation, and the original regulation can be still used. But in the case of China, it is a totally different situation. The original regulation system in China is already unfit for the market-oriented environment, but the new regulation system hasn't been constructed yet. Therefore, China has to solve an important problem in the process of the public utilities privatization that is how to set up a new regulation system to fit for the market economy. In fact, the ultimate purpose of privatization is right to promote a reform of the regulation system and raise the efficiency in the public utilities.This dissertation is composed of four parts. The first part explains some basic conceptions in this dissertation; the second part gives some answers to the question of "why do the public utilities have to be privatized"; the third part discusses the issue of "how to privatize the public utilities"; and the last part gives some advice to reconstruct the regulation system in the Chinese public utilities. |