China Real Estate

This competition is set to intensify further as China continues to liberalize the industry, according to the rules of its accession into the World Trade Organization(WTO). While all of the world's largest telecom companies manufacture and sell equipment in China, the actual networks are dominated by a small number of state-owned giants. Because China regards the telecom industry as strategic, the country's WTO accession terms retain some protections against foreign firms who were allowed to take 50% ownership of value-added services companies by 2004 but will only be able to own 49% of mobile and fixed-line services companies in 2007 and 2008 respectively.

In preparation for increased competition with the multinational telecom giants China has carried out a series of reforms and liberalizational. In fact, the long march to international competitiveness was properly started in 1994 with the creation of China Unicom as a rival to what was then the country's only telecom provider, China Telecom. This move created a duopoly in which the two companies competed in the area of basic landline services.

Following the formation of the Ministry of Information Industries in 1998 China Telecom was split into four entities-China Telecom, China Mobile, China Paging, and China satellite-In order to introduce further competition into the sector. In 2001 China Telecom was further split into two regional companies. Following that reform the telecom industry was to be formally shared, and competed in, by China Telecom, China Netcom, China Mobile, China Unicom, China Sat and China Railcom. China mobile and China Unicom basically compete for mobile subscriptions while the latest incarnation of China Telecom concentrates on fixed lines in Southern China and China Netcom controls fixed lines in the North.