It should be pointed out that there are no strict restrictions in the fields of natural monopoly and competition. The experience of economic development in some countries in the world tells us that with the progress of science and technology, the improvement of infrastructure and the continuous improvement of the market, industries that used to belong to natural monopoly can become competitive industries by introducing market competition mechanism, or realize marketization in some business links, thus greatly improving operating efficiency. The American government's deregulation of the civil aviation industry is a typical example. American civil aviation used to be a highly monopolized industry, and the government had strict restrictions on market access. Monopoly leads to low service quality and high service price, and consumers have great opinions about it, and the voice for reform is very high. In the 1980s, the United States gradually relaxed the government's control over the civil aviation industry, and some new airlines entered the market one after another. In the fierce market competition, some established airlines closed down and some new companies rose. Competition has promoted the segmentation of the civil aviation market, improved the service quality and greatly reduced the price, from which consumers have benefited.
Anti-monopoly in developed countries is mainly aimed at economic monopoly, in order to prevent private companies from expanding their monopoly position in one market to other markets by means of merger, bargaining and price alliance, which will harm the interests of consumers and small companies and hinder innovation, service quality improvement and technological progress. Different from developed countries, China's current problems are mainly not because economic monopoly hinders market competition and improves efficiency, but because of administrative monopoly, especially the monopoly of industries and departments. Such as telecommunications, finance, heating companies, gas companies, electric power companies, civil aviation, railway transportation, public transportation and so on. The monopoly position of these industries does not depend on technological innovation or capital investment, but on administrative power and the result of hindering market competition. Some industries seem to have the nature of natural monopoly, but in fact they are engaged in administrative monopoly, departmental monopoly, seeking departmental interests, or trying to solidify departmental vested interests. What's more, some departments often protect the interests of industries and departments in the name of safeguarding "national economic security", strengthening "government supervision" and improving "national competitiveness", which is difficult to identify and distinguish. It can be seen that the main task of anti-monopoly in China at this stage is anti-administrative monopoly.
Compared with economic monopoly, administrative monopoly is much more harmful to market order. First of all, administrative monopoly directly leads to the allocation of resources by administrative power or industry dominance, which hinders the formation and development of free competition mechanism, disrupts market order and reduces the operational efficiency of the whole economy. Secondly, administrative monopoly hinders the formation of a unified, open, competitive and orderly modern market system, which leads to a heavy burden on market barriers, the circulation of commodities and production factors is blocked, and the comparative advantages of various localities and enterprises are difficult to play. Third, administrative monopoly damages the legitimate rights and interests of operators to operate freely, and at the same time restricts consumers' right to choose goods and services freely, resulting in price monopoly and low service quality. Fourth, administrative monopoly is easy to breed corruption and damage the image of the government. Monopoly leads to the corporate behavior of government departments, resulting in a large number of fees and approval items, increasing the burden on enterprises and individuals. This kind of corruption is actually institutional corruption, which is more secretive and harmful than personal corruption, and its ultimate victim is the state. According to statistics, from 1998 to 200 1, some monopoly industries in China illegally collected various fees as high as 53 billion yuan. Administrative monopoly constitutes the most serious form of corruption in China at present, and its losses have far exceeded the economic losses caused by official corruption and bribery. Fifth, administrative monopoly directly violates WTO rules and is not conducive to improving China's international competitiveness.
Administrative monopoly is not simple, but an economic problem. To some extent, the industry monopoly department has evolved into an interest group, which has considerable influence on the formation of industry development policies. In this sense, to break the industry monopoly, we need to promote not only the reform of the economic system, but also the reform of the government management system.
In view of the disadvantages of industry monopoly, China began to explore the issue of industry reform aimed at breaking monopoly in the early 1990s. 1in March, 1994, the State Council approved the "three decisions" plan of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications. 1April, 1995, the former General Telecommunications Administration was changed into an enterprise legal person. 1February 1999, China Telecom was divided into four companies, namely China Unicom, China Mobile, China Telecom and China Netcom. In 2002, China Telecom was split again. 1In July, 1998, China Petroleum and Natural Gas Group Company (PetroChina) and China Petrochemical Group Company (Sinopec) were established on the basis of the original China Petroleum and Natural Gas Group Company. In 2002, China civil aviation industry was reorganized into five groups, including three airlines, 1 aviation security company and 1 aviation information service company. At the same time, the share ratio of foreign airlines and airports has been relaxed to more than 49%, and private capital can invest in the civil aviation industry. In 2002, the State Power Company was divided into 1 1 company, including two power grids, five power plants and four power auxiliary companies, and the Electricity Regulatory Commission was established to implement power bidding for online access. These last bastions of planned economy were split and reorganized into competitive oligarchs by administrative means, initially forming a certain scale market competition pattern. At the same time, urban water supply, gas supply, heat supply, sewage treatment, garbage disposal and public transportation, which are directly related to public interests, have also begun to open to domestic capital, allowing foreign capital to participate in the construction of municipal public facilities. This indicates that China's municipal public market will bid farewell to government monopoly and accelerate the marketization process. In 2003, Beijing broke the boundaries of region, ownership, domestic and foreign investment and industry monopoly, opened public transportation, rail transit, toll roads, water supply, gas supply, heating, sewage treatment and garbage disposal, and actively promoted the project legal person bidding system.
Although the reform of monopoly industries has achieved remarkable results, the reform process has just begun, and the comprehensive and real anti-monopoly reform has not yet begun. It is the aspiration of the people and the general trend to actively promote the reform of monopoly industries and break the monopoly of industries. It should be said that the time is ripe for China to break the administrative monopoly. Foreign experience has proved that breaking the monopoly of the industry is mostly introduced when the supply of the industry exceeds the demand. After years of development, the supply of products or services in almost all industries in China has exceeded the demand. At present, the monopoly industry is developing rapidly, and the "bottleneck" problem of product and service supply has basically eased, which has created the basic conditions for anti-monopoly reform.