Oil Price Liberalization in China: A Hard Nut to Crack?
Article from: OGEL 1 (2008), in China Energy Law and Policy
Abstract
China follows an incremental approach rather than a big bang to conduct oil pricing reform. Despite the fact that the reform aims towards oil price liberalization, out of political considerations the government still holds the power to decide the pace and pattern of moving domestic oil prices to the market ones, which I describe as a "state-regulated marketization" approach. By examining the Chinese government's underlying motives of oil pricing reform, this paper aims to analyze how and why China takes such an approach to reform its oil pricing mechanisms, and why thus far it is ...