电信重组引发五大悬念

重组的具体过程依然会显得漫长而艰辛,并充满各种不确定性和悬念。在经过了几年的猜谜游戏之后,中国电信行业第三次重组方案终于尘埃落定。5月24日14:00,工业和信息化部、国家发改委以及财政部联合发布中国电信业重组公告:基于电信行业现状,为实现改革目标,鼓励中国电信收购中国联通CDMA网(包括资产和用户),中国联通与中     

The political economy of the Korean telecommunications reform

South Korea proclaimed a gradual economic liberalization ever since the early 1980s. Regardless of her vow to do so, however, most of liberalization efforts turned out to be a sheer rhetoric. In sharp contrast, genuine market liberalization and regulatory reforms are being introduced in the telecommunication sector, which is unprecedented in the Korean economic history. Why and how could Korea pursue such a full scale market liberalization and regulatory reforms in the telecommunications sector? Though it is argued that a regulatory convergence in economic management is found in everywhere in the world, the particular speed, scope, and/or processes of a country’s telecommunication reform cannot be understood correctly without examining the structures and institutions of the Korean political economy and of the telecommunications industry. This paper examines the causes and consequences of the Korean telecommunication reform by analyzing the relevant institutional changes both in domestic and international, which largely affect the interaction among those involved in the process of market liberalization and regulatory reforms.     

The third-generation-mobile (3G) policy and deployment in China: Current status, challenges, and prospects

Since the inception of telecom reform in 1994, structural reform has been a main thread surrounding the course of the development of China's telecommunications industry. In structuring the 2008 reform and the 2009 3G rollout China's government adopted a relatively balanced approach in the hope of creating level-playing-field in 3G era. Nevertheless, due to the presence of substantial switching costs, substitution effects from the present technology mode, that is, 2.5G, the absence of killer applications, among other technological and institutional factors, China may not have a realistic 3G era before moving toward 4G and beyond. At the bare minimum, currently there is a lacking of either adequate technological-push or demand-pull for a full-scale 3G commercialization—there is no sign that this situation will change in the near term. Triggered by recent initiatives of market convergence between the telecommunications, Internet, and cable, a renewed circle of market, and regulatory reform is probably necessary to cast a sounder industry basis for a timing migration toward the next-generation-networks (NGNs). The timing migration toward 4G (and beyond) may provide a chance for a late-mover nation like China to leapfrog its western counterparts in leading the industry in the era of NGNs. To this end, China is confronted with a challenge in re-examining its industry policy as well as technological strategies for a sustainable development in the era of NGNs. This study offers heuristic analysis and insights on the above issues based on archival documents and interviews. While implications are suggested for China's circumstances, the Chinese experiences may also be considered by other countries and investors when it comes to 3G (and beyond) policies, regulations, deployments, and evolutions.     

Assessing the WTO agreements on China's telecommunications regulatory reform and industrial liberalization

By drawing on new institutional economics, this paper contends that the “rules-of-law” specified by the World Trade Organization (WTO), as an exogenous institution for the member states, will theoretically influence its members’ domestic telecommunications regulatory institutions, but that the actual effects will be different and will depend on the institutional endowments of host countries and their institutional stances. Empirically, this paper examines the impact of China's prospective membership status in the WTO on its telecommunications regulatory reform and industrial liberalization and explores the institutional barriers preventing China from fully implementing the WTO Agreements in this sector.     

英国电信产业的放松管制和对主导运营商BT的再管制

自 1 980年起 ,英国电信产业先后实施了邮政、电信分离 ,建立独立的管制机构 ,对开放市场准入和私有化以后仍然居于主导地位的运营商———英国电信公司 (BT)实施包括价格上限管制在内的一系列管制 ,促进了英国电信产业向竞争性结构的转化。目前 ,我国电信产业同样面临着放松管制以及放松管制以后如何重组和再管制主导运营商的棘手难题。本文拟对英国电信产业 2 0余年的改革经验进行比较系统的回顾和评析 ,以期对我国电信产业的下一步改革有所启示。     

An evaluation of China's evolving broadband policy: An ecosystem’s perspective

Although it is generally agreed that governments should have some roles in the development of broadband, questions about the specific role of governments remain unanswered, particularly from the perspective of developing countries. This paper evaluates China’s evolving broadband policy by developing a two-dimensional analytical framework, with the different stages of broadband development represented by columns and the four components of broadband ecosystem represented by rows. Generally speaking, China's telecommunications development has been driven by investments from government-allied entities and features a strong industrial policy. However, the Chinese government has chosen a somewhat soft-intervention approach in broadband development and relied on the market itself to grow by creating a competitive market structure. As the market has recently evolved to a certain degree of saturation, there is a seemingly shift of emphasis in China's broadband policy from infrastructure buildup and service provision to application creation and user demand stimulation. However, China’s broadband future is uncertain due to unsettled but important institutional and financial issues. Policy changes appear not to keep up with the broadband ecosystem evolution.     

中国芯片业熬冬

市场环境惨淡,融资环境不利,依靠单一产品打天下的大多数中国芯片企业能否摆脱兴亡轮回?"你好,这里是中纬吗?"10月20日,当记者按照宁波中纬公司网站上提供的联系电话打过去,那头一位接听电话的男士说:"现在是比亚迪!"宁波中纬因资金亏空破产,于10月6日以1.7亿元的价格拍卖给半导体产业"圈外"的企业——深圳比亚迪有限公司。     

From aperture satellite to "Internet finance": Institutionalization of ICTs in China's financial sector since 1991

China's financial industries started the process of marketization only two decades ago, but by 2017 its financial technology or fin-tech sector had taken half of the global market. The exponential diffusion of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in Chinese financial contexts have generated new organizational structures and socio-political relations that have the capacity to change China's position in the world economy. Drawing upon the sociological concept of institutionalization, this paper examines how the Chinese state has integrated ICT diffusion in its formal policies and its informal rules in China's financial development since 1991. Further, it addresses the political and socio-economic consequences of these developments. Based on the analyses of government documents and sources, trade journals, and statistic data from business databases, this paper divides the Chinese institutionalization of financial technologies into three stages and identifies the primary actors and paradigms for ICT diffusions in each stage. ICT diffusion has been constitutive but also disruptive to the existing financial policies, instrumental to the commercialization of state-owned banks, and has gradually transformed into a set of formal and informal rules accepted by a network of professionals, corporations, and government agencies. The institutionalization of ICT diffusion has engendered the continuous adjustment of financial policies and propelled innovations in China's financial economy.     

Productivity analysis of the telecommunications sector in China

This paper applies the data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach to measure the productivity performance of China's telecommunications sector at the provincial level. The results indicate that the efficiency scores for different provinces and regions are diverse: the efficiency scores of the provinces in the eastern region are significantly higher than those in the central and western regions. The differences in efficiency scores are mainly due to the differences in the operating environments of different provinces, rather than the efficiency performance of telecommunications enterprises. The results also suggest that labour redundancy and excess capacity of long-distance optical cable lines are major problems in China's telecommunications sector. After a period of rapid growth in investment and number of subscribers, it is time for the telecommunications sector to consolidate and to put more emphasis on productivity growth in order to meet the challenges posed by the World Trade Organization (WTO) commitments.     

Competition and regulation in China's 3G/4G mobile communications industry—Institutions,governance, and telecom SOEs

When it comes to the analysis of the intrinsic mechanism of market behaviors and hence competition development and regulatory imperatives in the Chinese telecommunications industry, currently there is no consistent pattern offered in the literature. In China's emergent 3G/4G era, market behaviors can be affected by various institutional factors, along with various forms of informal forces, which may translate into different implications for competition regulation. Based on extensive archival research and interview, this current study aims to bridge the gap by following an interpretive approach. An input–output model was substantiated for pattern-matching in the Chinese context base on the postulation of a series of propositions and hence Industry-Gray-Box. Accordingly, two categories of market behaviors, that is, market-driven vs. institutions-driven, were arguably delineated as being underpinning the competition development. Policy implications and future reform imperatives were discussed. This study may advance knowledge in terms of: (1) the establishment of a relatively consistent pattern for mapping the landscape of China's communications industry; (2) the substantiation of the inner working mechanism of China's SOE system in the telecommunications sector; and (3) original first attempt in identifying different roles of telecom SOEs and the governing forces that affect them. The paper also offers extensive and cohesive insights on China's formal and informal institutional environment in general and for telecommunications in particular. Measurements developed in this study may serve as basis for future study.     

The Unequal Effect of India's Industrial Liberalization on Firms’ Decision to Innovate: Do Business Conditions Matter?

Product‐market competition can boost industry growth if firms invest more in innovation. Using a natural policy experiment, the removal of India's License Raj, we show that firms in liberalized industries were 9% more likely to invest in R&D than firms in non‐liberalized industries. However, the impacts were not the same across firms of different size. After the reforms, firms in the top quartile were 23% more likely to invest in R&D than those in the lowest size quartile. Both productivity differences across firms and the heterogeneous impacts of business conditions on firms explain unequal effects of India's industrial liberalization reform.     

Reaping digital dividends: Digital inclusive finance and high-quality development of enterprises in China

The digital economy is progressively emerging as a new driving force for high-quality development in China and has been paving a new avenue for enterprise development through the progress of the digital inclusive finance (DIF) system. Under this paradigm of development, this research examines whether and how DIF exerts an influence on the China's economy which is currently experiencing a transition development of enterprises (HQDE). Using a sample of China's listed companies from 2011 to 2019, the results demonstrate that DIF has a significant favorable impact on HQDE. Furthermore, our analysis finds that reducing financial leverage and alleviating financial constraints are intermediary mechanisms of the effect. Moreover, the beneficial effect of DIF varies in terms of different regions, enterprise property rights, and industrial nature—it is observed to be more pronounced in the eastern region, non-state-owned enterprises, and tertiary industry enterprises. Our results provide empirical evidence that DIF enables enterprises to achieve high-quality development.     

中国食品大企业的可持续发展研究

食品行业是我国国民经济发展的支柱产业,对国民经济运行和市场经济发展都有非常重要的影响。加快食品工业的发展,确保食品安全,是国家可持续发展战略的重要选择。2008年以“三鹿奶粉事件”为导火索,食品行业出现了很多问题,对食品企业的可持续发展产生了不良影响。作为食品企业该如何做到可持续发展,本文在阐述我国食品大企业发展现状的基础上分析了食品行业面临的问题,对此从企业、政府、社会三个层面提出了相应的解决对策和建议。     

A study on forward and backward linkage effects in South Korea's telecom industry across generations

The primary purpose of this study is to examine the spillover effect of South Korea's telecom industry on other industries until its evolution to the 4th generation. By using Input-Output Table Data to compute Forward and Backward Linkage Effects in South Korea's telecom industry throughout Generational Changes, this study aims to analyze South Korea's telecom industry's impacts and changes on upstream and downstream industries to offer implications for its evolution to the 5th generation. This study used empirical input-output data for the period between the years 2000–2014 to conduct input-output analysis to evaluate forward and backward linkages in South Korea's telecom industry for each generation of it. The results revealed that (1) Korea's telecom industry can be defined as a dependent manufacturing industry due to its below-average forward linkage and above-average backward linkage over the whole study period, and (2) backward linkage in South Korea's telecom industry was higher than the economy-wide average value during our study period although it decreased with the industry's generational shifts. The results indicate that telecommunications companies should create new markets in which they can propagate emerging technologies of the 4IR (4th Industrial Revolution) to other industries, in order to ensure that the 5th generation telecom industry maintain its position as a key industry. On the other hand, the government should make policies to support start-ups and SMEs in telecom industry and implement structural reforms in Korea's oligopolistic telecom market.     

Today's state‐owned enterprises of China: are they dying dinosaurs or dynamic dynamos?

This paper raises the question and provides empirical evidence regarding the status of the evolution of the state‐owned enterprises (SOEs) in China today. In this study, we compare the SOEs to domestic private‐owned enterprises (POEs) and foreign‐controlled businesses (FCBs) in the context of their organizational cultures. While a new ownership form, many of the POEs evolved from former collectives that reflect the traditional values of Chinese business. Conversely, the FCBs are much more indicative of the large global MNCs. Therefore, we look at the SOEs in the context of these two reference points. We conclude that the SOEs of today have substantially transformed to approximate a configuration desired by the Chinese government when it began the SOE transformation a couple of decades ago to make them globally competitive. The SOEs of today appear to be appropriately described as China's economic dynamic dynamo for the future. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Institutional endowment as foundation for regulatory performance and regime transitions: the role of the US constitution in telecommunications regulation in the United States

Recent research demonstrates the importance of what Spiller and Levy (1994, 1996) call a nation's institutional endowment to the efficacy of regulatory policies. We examine various roles of the US Constitution as an enabler of regulatory governance institutions that shape policies towards telecommunications industries, and constrain efforts to change those policies. Constitutional clauses designed to serve important noneconomic societal goals do so by limiting the discretion and efficacy of government bodies. This limits the extent to which regulatory policies may be used to promote economic efficiency. However, these constitutional constraints may also promote long-term efficiency goals by making regulatory commitments more credible.     

Politics,policy and fixed-line telecommunications provision: Insights from Australia

Over the past 40 years, telecommunications policy worldwide has been dominated by the privatisation of former government-owned firms, the pursuit of increasing competition as well as the delegation of day-to-day operations of industry decision-making and oversight from core governments to autonomous regulators sitting at arms-length from political decision-making. One of the most (apparently) dramatic reversals of this trend has occurred in Australia where the federal government has set up a state-owned company (NBN Co) to fully replace and upgrade the fixed-line infrastructure for voice and broadband communications for the entire country. Some argued that the NBN heralded a reversal of a “failed, neoliberal” deregulation and pro-competition policy agenda in Australia, and a return to “social democratic” values. The NBN has attracted interest as a possible model for other governments looking to fund broadband infrastructure.The NBN Co's network is nearing completion. It has proved disappointing in many ways, with costs escalations, missed deadlines and a downscaling of the original full-fibre footprint to a mixed technology model (MTM). It has also proved politically divisive, with some claiming the MTM changes represent the reassertion of a neoliberal political agenda. In this paper, we trace the evolution of the fixed-line telecommunications industry in Australia from the 1980s to the present along the dimensions of privatisation, deregulation and competition in voice, broadband and policy settings. We find that contrary to popular political rhetoric, the Australian industry reforms have been characterised by only a partial and inconsistent progression towards the international policy objectives. In particular, ongoing government ownership of the incumbent created perverse incentives for both regulatory and industry actors and ensured political involvement in import network investment and operations decisions which in other jurisdictions are delegated to private-sector owners and regulators at arms-length from political influence. We contend that the NBN was not a social democratic response to failed neoliberal policies, nor was the MTM a neoliberal reassertion. Rather, the politicisation of the NBN is a function of the inability to decentralise ownership and control of the industry away from the government. These issues will continue to dominate the Australian debate, as the statutory context requires the privatisation of the NBN within five years of its projected 2021 completion. Extreme caution is warranted for jurisdictions looking to the NBN model for guidance.     

Trade patterns,industry structure and industrial policy in telecommunications

This article examines three major changes which have been occuring in the telecommunications market: liberalization, leading to increased competition in services and equipment, the internationalization of the equipment market, and a rapidly changing industrial structure. The interrelationship among the three trends is analyzed, and the authors hypothesize that it is the technological determinants which are driving the changing structure of the industry and its trade patterns and regulatory environment. The instruments of industrial policy are discussed, with examples from several countries. The European Community's policy in telecommunications is explained in some detail.     

China's information superhighway: What is it and who controls it?

This paper focuses on China's telecommunications sector from a national perspective, and summarizes the structure of the country's information superhighway. It then analyzes the changing regulatory and policy framework, and the competition among current and potential players in the market. This leads to a final discussion on the implications and likely outcome - who will control the superhighway in China.     

Korean telecom policy in global competition: implications for developing countries

United States efforts to open the Korean telecommunications market have been incessant and tenacious, to the extent that Korea is the only country to be twice designated by the US as a priority foreign country (PFC). Through major restructuring driven by the Korean government, the telecommunications infrastructure of Korea has been strengthened and expanded, and in the process has posed a threat to the US telecommunications industry. Thus, since the late 1980s, the Korean telecommunications industry has been monitored and threatened with trade sanctions by the United States Trade Representative, and all internal restructuring has been closely related to bilateral negotiations with the US, and multilateral negotiations in the Uruguay Round. Based on interviews with key Korean telecommunications personnel and analyses of public documents, this research examines the Korean telecommunications market, telecommunications policies relative to the US and WTO, and the recent economic crisis that has affected the stability of the industry. The paper also offers five major recommendations to government and industry policymakers, including a more active and positive stance toward liberalisation, the relinquishing by bureaucrats of their monopolistic power over policymaking, the securing of an open and transparent policymaking process, and, in relations with the US, and the mobilisation of regional and multilateral organisations to ensure fair competition in telecommunications.