Policy Regulation And Innovation In Chinas Electricity And Telecom Industries

The scale of China's innovation ambitions inspires worldwide commentary, much of it poorly informed. Focusing on electricity, telecommunication and semiconductors, this book offers a richly detailed account of China's innovation efforts. Massive application of human, policy and financial resources shows great promise, but institutional obstacles, conflicting objectives, ill-advised policies and Soviet-era legacies inject inefficiencies, resulting in a complex mosaic of success and failure in both technical and commercial dimensions. State Grid leads the world in high-voltage power transmission, while domestic semiconductors lag behind the international frontier. Electricity and telecom providers record impressive technical advances, but overinvestment and inefficient operation contribute to high costs and prices. Nuclear power combines technical excellence with commercial weakness. Cost reduction rather than new technology underpins commercial success in solar materials. The book's granular studies look beyond specific technologies to incorporate the policy matrix, regulatory structures and global developments into the appraisal of China's innovation achievements.

This study analyzes China's telecommunications and electricity sector from three perspectives - market reforms, regulatory reforms, and their intersection with major challenges - and places each in a global context. Market reforms include changes in market structure, both globally and in China. Regulatory reforms include changes in governance structure, both globally and in China, along with price reform. For telecom, the intersection is with Internet and media; for electricity, with the environment. China has implemented reforms in both sectors with significant success in terms of massive investment and increased subscribership. However, in both sectors there are longstanding problems that if unresolved will have significant opportunity costs in terms of growth and innovation.

Openness and competition sparked major advances in Chinese industry. Recent policy reversals emphasizing indigenous innovation seem likely to disappoint.

This book provides a concise introduction to China’s electricity sector, suitable for university students and business analysts. It is business focused, combining an introduction from an established regional electricity consultancy with five academic chapters covering governance, market stakeholders and reform, wind and solar power, environmental regulation, and developments in financing. It is written in an accessible but rigorous style for people with limited knowledge of the topic, with minimal jargon but full referencing throughout the academic chapters. Each academic chapter starts with a summary and three key points to guide the reader’s understanding.

The study’s recommendations describe institutional elements in the context of electric power sector regulation and has the objective to increase the understanding of the interdependencies of the institutional elements. In future work, the study results might be employed for designing very specific regulatory policies. The recommendations developed in this study focus primarily on the regulatory framework for smart grids and contains a quite detailed description of how the German electricity markets evolved. It also focuses on the effects of ambitiously expanding generation capacities of renewable energy sources (RES) on established electricity markets. The presented evidence will provide insights on how the regulatory framework in China could be designed to foster smart grids developments in the context of establishing electricity markets and expanding RES generation capacities.

This book provides a comprehensive account of the electricity industry in China, the world's largest power producer and carbon emitter. The authors describe the historical development of China’s energy sector and study the structure and economics of the industry. Furthermore, the book studies the impact of China’s substantial demand for coal, oil and natural gas on world energy markets and discusses future trends and reforms, such as the introduction of renewable energy sources. This book will appeal to anyone interested to broaden their knowledge on the past, present and future of Chinese electricity industry.

In the early 1990s, China started to reform its telecommunications regime by removing barriers to foreign and private investment and encouraging competition. This text applies the "Public Choice Plus" theory (developed in the study of economics) to the analysis of the policymaking process of China's telecommunications reforms. Guan is a senior fellow at the Centre for Innovation Law and Policy at the U. of Toronto.

This unique book considers competition policy and regulation in light of the recent introduction of the anti-monopoly law in China. It addresses the relevance of competition policy for China from a broad theoretical and practical perspective, bringing together lawyers and economists from China, Europe and the US to provide an integrated law and economics approach. Given that the development of the Chinese anti-monopoly law in China was heavily reliant on a comparative approach, the contributors analyse how its text and practice actually compare to European and US legislation. The first cases in which Chinese anti-monopoly law were applied are explored, and both competition law and competition policy are discussed in detail. Topics include: industrial and professional regulation and their relationship to competition law, merger control, substantive competition law issues, cartels, and abuse of dominance and predation. This unique book will prove a fascinating read for competition lawyers, economists with a special interest in regulation and competition, and for practitioners concerned with competition policy and regulation.

This study of the Chinese electric power industry examines the ownership and the restructuring of the industry. The reform of the electric power industry is also seen as part of the wider economic development that has been taking place in China, thus providing fresh perspectives on the changes taking place in both the economy and society more generally.

Chinas Einsatz von Industriepolitik hat die Debatte über staatliche Intervention in der Wirtschaft neu entfacht. Nur wenige Branchen erleben die lenkende Hand des Staates wie der chinesische Elektrizitätssektor. Dieser sieht sich aber einem radikalen Umbruch ausgesetzt. Der Begriff "Smart Grid" umfasst technische und systemische Reformen, die für einen Strukturwandel erforderlich sind. Diese Studie untersucht durch die Linse der Steuerungstheorie die Auswirkungen einer Gesetzgebung auf Machtkämpfe im Elektrizitätssektor Chinas. Anhand von Dokumentenanalyse und Interviews wird der Frage nachgegangen, wie Steuerungsprozesse durchgeführt und Gegensteuerungsstrategien entwickelt werden, um Verhandlungen auf politischer Ebene zu beeinflussen.