MRLC Held the Seminar on the Legal Issues of the Reform of Monopoly Industries

2015.06.24 - 2015.06.24

On the morning of June 24th, 2015, the third seminar on the legal issues of the reform of monopoly industries, organized by China-Korea Market & Regulation Law Center (MRLC), was held at Room 725 of Mingde Law Building of Renmin University. Associate Professor Meng Yanbei hosted the seminar. Professor Shi Jichun, Professor Xu Mengzhou, Professor Zhu Daqi, and Associate Professor Song Biao from Renmin Law School participated in the discussion. The seminar was divided into two sessions. In the first session, six postgraduate students from Law School of Renmin University reported on their research results. Then the four professors respectively commented on each report.

Hu Yu, Juris Master of grade 2013, reported firstly on fundamental questions of monopoly industry reform. She took petroleum and natural gas industry as an example to analyze the drawbacks of monopoly industries in China today. Moreover, she pointed out that the reform in future should be deregulated, classified, and progressed step by step, and the related legal system should be improved, in order to provide effective suggestions on the deepening reform of monopoly industry. Tang Shi, Juris Master of grade 2013, gave her report on legal issues of market access system reform in monopoly industry. She considered the building of an effective market competition structure as the primary objective of monopoly industry reform. Therefore, current market access system reform should be premised on distinguishing natural monopoly business from competition business, and formulate different market access regulation in line with varying characteristics of each session. Xing Xiu, professional master of economic law of grade 2014, expounded her opinion on the price reform of monopoly industry. Through analyzing existing questions of petroleum and natural gas industry, she demonstrated the price reform scheme of petroleum and natural gas industry step by step. What’s more, she proposed some legal advice on price reform of monopoly industry; and emphasized that legislation should go first.

Li Yu Heng, Juris Master of grade 2014, reported the legal issues on state-owned-enterprises reform of monopoly industry. He considered that problems of the reform are irrational distribution of state-owned estates and disordered relationship between state-owned enterprise and sponsors. Thus, he proposed a series of legal suggestions on the perfection of modern enterprise system in monopoly industry. Chen Li, Juris Master of grade 2014, researched on legal issues of management system of monopoly industry. She analyzed three major problems of management system, and started with the specific conditions of petroleum and natural gas industry to the whole monopoly industry. She proposed to perfect management organization system, supervision mechanism, industry association system and the public decision-making mechanism, and pointed out how to be implemented and reflected in the monopoly industry.  Li Shu, Juris Master of grade 2014, reported legal issues of the income distribution system reform of monopoly industries. She systematically analyzed the income distribution condition of petroleum and natural gas industry and the causes of unfair income distribution of monopoly industry. Her thorough analysis of the realization ways of a fair income distribution in monopoly industry responded to the existing legal problems of unfair income distribution in monopoly industry.

In the comments section, Professor Xu Mengzhou first affirmed the form of this seminar, and proposed suggestions of amendments for each report separately. He stressed that the starting point of academic research is to find and solve problems, and these problems really exist and need to be effectively addressed. Moreover, focus on the timeliness and forwardness of materials, and have ability to identify the mixed materials. Associate Professor Song Biao also affirmed the formal sense of the seminar, and believed that the purpose of this seminar has been reached. The reporter could collect materials based on the research problems, and proposed some opinions when forming the literature review. However, due to the lack of related practice experience in the oil and gas industry of the reporters and lack of familiarity with the industry, the rationality of a series of reform proposals needs further discussion.

Professor Zhu Daqi affirmed the efforts made by the reporters on their research, but noted that the excavation of the problem is still insufficient. He proposed that academic research requires full possession of materials through reading and research, sort and filter materials by independent judgment, and express ideas and logical structure in a consistent precise language. Professor Shi Jichun had a specific analysis on the characteristics of the oil and gas industry from the view of his research field, and believed that the oil industry is scale economy and scope economy, industrial policy aims to reduce the cost of free competition, emphasizing that our study can’t go back. In addition, he believed that the reform and regulation of state-owned enterprises must consider the national conditions, only by understanding the reality may the research has practical significance, and thus may propose targeted and workable suggestions. We should stand on the reality of our country, study the Chinese issues, and eventually resolve the problem.