Moving towards unsustainability: a study of the Chinese telecommunications regulation

The Chinese telecommunications market has evolved into the world's largest market in recent years, which attracted vast attention from both foreign industries and regulators throughout the world. Although having only a short period of privatisation and liberalisation, the market has provided sharp increases in almost every aspect. Being a transitional economy, China is now facing the big challenge of sustaining this fast development in the long run. This research explores the development of China's telecommunications industry, discusses the driving forces and the domestic regulatory/legal environment, estimates the future developing trend and makes recommendations as to a better regulatory practice in the transitional period. The focus of this research is to assess whether the astonishingly fast development in the Chinese telecommunications industry in the past two decades is sustainable, and if so, what would be the supporting regulatory framework and how should it work.