China's Telecommunications Market: Entering a New Competitive Age. By Ding Lu and Chee Kong Wong. [Cheltenham and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2003. 177 pp. £45.00. ISBN 1-84064-431-1.]

In: The China quarterly, Volume 179, p. 815-816

Abstract

During the past two decades China has grown into one of the most significant telecommunications markets in the world and any book on this field has the potential to draw serious interest. China's Telecommunications Market: Entering a New Competitive Age, by Ding Lu and Chee Kong Wong, is well timed.This book consists of six chapters, aiming at "not the features of an established framework but changes after changes in an evolving system" (p. xiii). With strong backgrounds in economics, the authors have used intensive economic statistical data to analyse and explain the changes, while integrating institutional dynamics into the analysis. This economics-oriented approach distinguishes this study from previous books on similar topics, including China in the Information Age: Telecommunications and the Dilemmas of Reform by Mueller and Tan (1997) and Chinese Telecommunications Policy by Yan and Pitt (2002).