Reforms in China’s Telecommunications.doc

Reforms in China’s Telecommunications John Ure Director of the Telecommunications Research Project Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong Seminar ‘Telecommunications in the PRC’ Organized by the Asian Law Journal 20th April, Hong Kong 1994 Ladies and Gentlemen, I shall keep my introduction short and to the point. Reforms in China’s telecommunications sector are being driven by a number of factors. They are part of the general reform of state enterprise currently taking place. They are part of the national priority to modernize China’s economy and develop new technologies, especially information technologies. They are part of a struggle between the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications (MPT) and other ministries over who can and should provide public telecommunications facilities and services. They are part of China’s centrifugal tendency to spin-off autonomy to the provinces against Beijing’s attempts to centralize authority. And overlaying all these are the politics of personalities, factions and networks of other interests. Perhaps for this seminar it needs to be stressed that this complexity of forces do not play within any clearly defined structure of telecommunications or commercial law. Rather, a rule of thumb in China seems to be, do what you can until someone with authority tells you otherwise, but don’t be too public about it. Open Door Policies - Back Door Realities Since the Open Door policy in 1979 China has prioritized technological modernization in which telecommunications was given a central role. In the late 1980s the Provincial Posts Telecoms Bureau were given greater financial and organizational autonomy, although within limits established by the MPT which remains responsible for the national and international network. The MPT has jealously guarded its monopoly of public telecoms but, as has happened in other countries, the monopoly has been eroded at the edges in the area of radio telecoms, such as trunked radio, paging and mobile