One of the authors of China's draft telecommunications law said on Thursday he did not expect it to be enacted this year, leaving the industry in a confusing state as China prepares to enter the World Trade Organization, Total Telecom reported on its website.
Liu Cai, vice chairman of the China Institute of Communications, said the Ministry of Information Industry, the telecom regulator, was unlikely to finish China's first law governing the telecom market before China joins the WTO, expected later this year.
"China's telecommunications law needs some time for us to coordinate. We need to be forward-looking and make it suitable to globalization and to China's commitments to the WTO," said Liu, a member of the MII-led committee drafting the law.
Liu said it was unlikely the law would be passed before the annual meeting of lawmakers in March of 2002.
"Now it seems it is not possible to have it passed during the current government," Liu told reporters at an industry conference in reference to the March meeting.
Last year, the MII banned private and foreign investors from buying majority stakes in Chinese telecom firms, although that set of regulations lacks the authority of a formal law.
Until then, China's seven licensed telecommunications operators -- including two mobile carriers -- would operate in a "confusing" environment, Liu said.
"It may be confusing for a while," he said on the sidelines of the conference.
High-level committee under way
Meanwhile, China's Premier Zhu Rongji would form and steer a committee to govern the industry that would wield more power than the MII, Liu said, confirming media reports.
"This is a decision that was just made," Liu said at the conference. "The office has not been formed. Everything is under preparation," he said.
Zhu, a reformist due to retire from his Communist Party posts next year and as premier in 2003, seeks to avoid overlapping network construction in China, an electronic overseas edition of the official China Daily newspaper said earlier this month.
China Mobile Communications Corp has an overseas-listed arm China Mobile (HK) Ltd and its smaller rival China Unicom Group has an overseas-listed arm China Unicom Ltd.
Foreign investors, who will be allowed to buy up to 25 percent of Chinese mobile and fixed-line telecommunications firms under China's agreements with WTO member nations, may be frustrated by the lack of a law in the early phase of China's WTO membership.
"It makes it very nerve-racking for the foreign players," said Peter Lovelock, a telecom expert at the Beijing-based consultancy MadeforChina.
(China Daily October 21, 2001)
