Diffusion, transmutation, and regulatory regime in socialist market economies: telecoms reform in China and Vietnam

Abstract

Marketization and state restructuring are proceeding apace in China and Vietnam. China and Vietnam are not, however, converging upon the global regulatory model, even allowing for customary national variations. Rather, they are building up distinctive forms of regulatory regimes aiming to maintain the party-state's control over key state sectors, while at the same time integrating with the global economy and conforming to international norms and standards. This study argues that the regulatory model being adopted in Vietnam and China is the product of a specific kind of transition from a command to a market economy within an authoritarian political regime. While diffusion theories are of use in identifying external driving forces for the reform effort, these theories are of limited value for unveiling the dynamics of local contexts. Indigenous incentives, opportunity structures, and the experimental nature of public policy explain why, despite their exposure to global reform movements and commitment to multilateral institutions, China and Vietnam are likely to end up not with just a variety of the same regulatory regime, but a different one. The case of telecommunications regulation is used to illustrate this.

Keywords:

• policy diffusion
• institutional transmutation
• regulatory regime
• telecoms reform
• China
• Vietnam

Acknowledgments

Yukyung Yeo is Assistant Professor at the College of International Studies, Kyung Hee University, Seoul, South Korea. She holds a PhD from the University of Maryland, College Park. She is currently working on a book project on regulatory politics in Chinese industrial economy. Her research areas include government–business relations in China's key strategic industries, focusing on institutional change and adaptation, as well as from a comparative perspective. Recent publications include ‘Between owner and regulator: governing the business of China's telecommunications service industry’, The China Quarterly, December, No. 200 (2009); ‘Remaking the Chinese state and the nature of economic governance?: Early appraisal of the 2008 super-ministry reform’, Journal of Contemporary China (December 2009).

Martin Painter is Chair Professor of Public and Social Administration, City University of Hong Kong. He is currently researching on regulatory reform in East and Southeast Asia, autonomy and control in Hong Kong government bodies and adoption of western models of public management in China and Vietnam. Recent publications include (edited with John Pierre), Challenges to State Policy Capacity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); ‘Tradition and transformation in the Thai bureaucracy,’ Critique Internationale, 35 (April/June 2007); and (with Dong Lisheng and Tom Christensen) ‘Administrative reform in China's central government – how much “Learning from the West”?’ International Review of Administrative Science, 74(3) (2008).