At the start of this month, the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) extended the
deadline for dismantling regional economic barriers to the end of
June after inspections found the previous one had not been met,
according to the April 11 issue of Oriental Outlook.
The initial time limit was set in a joint circular issued last
year by MOFCOM, the State Council's Legal Affairs Office (LAO), the
ministries of finance, supervision and communications, the State
Administration of Taxation and the General Administration of
Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine.
The aim was to remove administrative barriers, market
segmentation and obstruction of fair competition between provinces.
It targeted policies that directly or indirectly excluded or
restricted external commodities from local markets and vice
versa.
All provinces were required to submit a summary report on their
progress in clearing barriers to MOFCOM and the LAO by the end of
January.
Though there had been progress in some provinces, the success of
the initiative varied widely, according to MOFCOM, with the
majority of provinces failing to publish the results of barrier
removal or provide necessary data.
An inspection group jointly organized by the above seven
departments suggested prolonging the deadline to the end of June
and focusing on the clearing work on a city and county level.
MOFCOM issued a second circular at the beginning of this month,
asking all provinces to break all regional economic blockades
before the end of June.
One anonymous expert told Oriental Outlook that the
delay was due to some local governments' resentment toward the
reform.
Regional blockades not only form a major obstruction to an
integrated national market but also greatly restrict competition,
causing low-level redundant construction and serious waste of
resources, Jin Zhiguo, president of Tsingtao Brewery Co. Ltd, told
Oriental Outlook.
He said they are the result of the de facto regional
protectionism adopted by many local governments for regional
political and economic interests.
The government has been trying to remove regional barriers and
establish an integrated national market since 1980, when the State
Council published the Interim Provisions on Promoting and
Protecting Competition.
Though barriers have lessened since then, they still exist in
various forms and degrees and have taken on some new traits, said
Zhou Weilin, professor at Fudan University's
China Center for Economic Studies.
Regional blockades have transformed into local regulations and
technical, quality and environmental criteria that favor local
enterprises and exclude outside ones, said Zhou.
He said some local legislation seems to protect the legal
interests of the public but local governments adopt double criteria
during implementation, turning a blind eye to local enterprises
while restricting those from elsewhere.
Though regional blockades are incompatible with the market
economy, trying to break them in one move will also do no good, as
China's economy is in a transitional period and regional blockades
have rooted historical reasons, some experts say.
Zhou said regional blockades expose the contradiction between
partial and overall interests and between local and national
interests. In some regions, especially underdeveloped ones, local
governments have concerns over financial revenues and employment.
Once the blockades are broken and the market is fully open, many
local enterprises will go bankrupt through competition, resulting
in increasing unemployment and even impairing social stability.
A cushion period is necessary for clearing regional blockades,
said Zhou, stressing that without developed mechanisms competition
in an open market would put local enterprises in a tight spot.
Administrative monopoly is the most important reason for
regional blockades and is the most influential and harmful in
confining competition. Therefore, establishing and perfecting a
legal system centered on anti-monopoly law is most important for an
integrated national market, said Wang Yehua, researcher at the
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of Legal Studies.
An anti-monopoly law is currently under examination.
(Oriental Outlook, translated by Yuan Fang for
China.org.cn, April 27, 2005)