The Research Of The Regulation Of Express Industry In China Through Supervisory Laws And Regulations

The whole postal industry in China mainly consists of two different parts, one is universal postal service industry which is characterized in commonweal, and the other is express industry which is characterized in competitiveness. The express industry started at the beginning of China’s reform and opening-up. In recent years, along with the national consumption structure upgrade and a huge market demand stimulated by the rapid development of new service industry, such as electronic commerce and online shopping, the express industry has developed into an important industry which has a considerable scale of economic and social influence with hundreds of thousand of employees and tens of billion of annual sales volume. On the1st of October in2009, the new Postal Law of the People’s Republic of China came into act, in which the express industry got a clear legal position for the first time. The Postal Law, as well as a series of regulations and other normative documents, has then formed a regulatory framework in express industry. The objectives of this regulation include the unification of express service standards, the improvement of express service quality, the promotion of market opening and competition and so on. Among which, the first two objectives has achieved remarkable effect by defining the operation and management issues and the industrial standards clearly, however, at the same time, it makes people tend to ignore another important task that the supervisory laws and regulations ought to fulfill--the promotion of market competition, while people are focusing on the express service standards and qualities themselves. In fact, the development of express industry will inevitably be confronted with the problem of relationship between express industry and the traditional postal service system (e.g. postal monopoly), and in that respect, whether a fair market competition in express industry can be realized will depend to a large extent on whether the supervisory laws and regulations themselves are reasonable, above all, if there are some contents which unreasonably restrict the express business or harm the benefits of express companies, in the name of "protecting" the universal postal service.Therefore, this paper chooses a special perspective, as based on the promotion of market competition, to investigate the current situation of supervisory laws and regulations, aiming to discover the existing problems and try to put forward solving methods. First, a general analysis of express industry has been done, in which it gives a clear definition of express; redoes a qualitative analysis referring to the newest editions of "The Central Product Classification(CPC)","International Standard Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities(ISIC)"and"The Classification of National Economic Industry (GB/T4754-2011)";points out that the start of express industry can be traced back to the year1839in the United States of America; and gives a detailed introduction to the development history and current market situation of China’s express industry. After that, five problems that may preclude competition are pointed out,based on a comprehensive presentation of supervisory laws and regulations of express industry, to be specific, including the inappropriateness of regulating the express industry in a postal law, the drawback of the leading role played by the competent authority in the legislative process, the unreasonable market access barrier which may be set up due to the implement of administrative licensing, the adverse impact on competitive environment in express industry that may be aroused by the ambiguous contents about the compensation mechanism of universal postal service, the narrow function and administration tendency of China Express Association(CEA).Then, a method of comparative analysis has been used to give an overview of the regulation of express industry in the United States of America and in the European Union, with an emphasis on some specific practice from which we can draw lessons from to solve the above-mentioned five problems. And based on all the discussions above, five corresponding solution measures has finally been proposed,including revising the current postal law to concentrate on universal postal service, improving the transparency and public participation of legislation, lowering the threshold for market access, defining the specific contents of compensation mechanism of universal postal service,giving full play to the role of China Express Association.