Analysis on difficulties in reform of regulations and policies concerning urban tap water industry in China

Abstract

Through over twenty years' development, governmental reform on regulations and policies concerning urban tap water industry in China has achieved certain breakthrough and restriction in admission has been revoked, water rate has been adjusted towards rational level. However, there still exist a number of severe problems in regulations & policies in terms of admission, price and institutional system of regulations & policies, for example, insufficient competition in tap water industry, over-rising speed of water price, and unsmooth institutional system etc. Occurrence of these problems is mainly due to misplaced government objectives on regulations and policies, institutional system of “political-and-corporate-alliance” and backward techniques on regulations and policies. China must consider carefully economic & technical characteristics of its tap water industry and draw reference from experience from that of developed countries as Great Britain etc., and meanwhile, keeping the nationalization of tap water industry and the nature of political-and-corporate-alliance in mind, strive to push reforms in terms of admission, price and institutional arrangements to gradually establish rational system of regulations and policies.