Comparative study of the Communications Law and Policy Reforms in Hong Kong, Taiwan and China

Abstract

On 11th March 2008, China announced a radical reform of its ministries. The Ministry of Information Industry (MII), the existing telecommunications regulator, will be merged into the new Ministry of Industry and Information. Two years ago, Taiwan and Hong Kong reformed their communications law and policy in the direction of a unified regulator. In 2006, Taiwan established a unified regulator called National Communications Commission while Hong Kong announced a merger of the telecommunications and broadcasting regulators into a unified Communications Authority. By adopting such methodologies as literature review and documentary analysis, the authors examine three research questions in this paper: firstly, how does the Greater China Area respond to the phenomenon of technological convergence in their communications laws and policies? Secondly, has regulatory harmonization occurred in Hong Kong, Taiwan and China? Thirdly, why have these three Chinese jurisdictions remained different in their communications laws and policies? In this paper, the authors argue that these three Chinese jurisdictions have all moved, to a different degree, towards a more unified model of communications regulation in response to the development of technological convergence. However, the convergence phenomenon has not led to an identical model of communications law and policy in these three places. The regulatory reforms undertaken in these three Chinese jurisdictions also demonstrate that few countries or cities integrating into the global economy can be immune from the impact of technological convergence and global competition of information economy.