The System Reform Of The Tobacco Administrative Monopoly Barriers And Countermeasures Research

Administrative monopoly is a specialized concept with Chinese characteristics. From theviewpoint of classical economics, there are two definitations, one is the exclusive monopoly ofgovernment, the other is the monopoly authorized by government. In the former situation,government directly exercise exlusive monopoly power(e. g. alcohol monopoly, tobacco monopoly),namely the government agency authorize the special monopoly power to a certain type of. As to thecase of administrative monopoly of China, it actually manefistes itself with the both two aspects ofmeaning mentioned-above. 30 years of reform and opening up has caused China successful changefromhighly-centralized planned economic system to the socialist economic system withmarket-oritented. As an important organic part of the national economy, tobacco industry hasalso experienced the significant changes in the wave of reform, with to the establishment of thestate tobacco monopoly system as it’s core. according to the above-mentioned classical theory,tobacco industry could be categorized as a typical administrative monopoly of the government, withwell accepted defining of “state monopoly”. Compared with the other state-owned enterprises inChina, the tobacco industry occupys a special status for its exclusiveness of goods & service supplyand top contributor for taxes, exerting great influences on the national revenue. for those reason, thetobacco industry has always undergone special regulation of government. The same situation alsoexists in the other industries. Nevertheless, as the Ministry of Railways dissolved, the monopoly ofsalt and wine deregulated, the tobacco industry has been under pressure to reform the existing systemof administrative monopoly. In spite of necessity of maintaining current administrative monopolysystem, any improper reform of administrative monopoly would bring efficiency loss to the industry.With concentration on "administrative monopoly", this paper tries to investigate the consolidatedmanagement system between tobacco monopoly administration and tobacco company;in addition, toreview Chinese local government’s behaviors on the regulation of monopoly with constraints andintervention; finally to reveal the degree of administrative monopoly in prefecture-level tobaccoindustry and the feasible countermeasures of addressing the efficiency effects thus caused, withreference of the tobacco industry governance mode of the other countries. To sum up, it’snecessary for Chinese tobacco industry administrative monopoly to pursue some dynamicmechanism reform and institutional change, for the purpose of improving and developing China’stobacco industry.