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In fact, China has failed to keep one of the infrastructure promises it made on its selection in July 2001 as the Olympic host -- the provision of a widely-supported third-generation (3G) mobile communications network. And this should not have been so.
With a huge mobile user base -- 601 million, the most in the world, as of June 2008, China should have no problem migrating its mobile communications into the 3G era. But things have not turned out that way. China has yet to issue one single 3G license, apparently because time division synchronous code division multiple access (TD-SCDMA), the 3G standard that it wants to use, an indigenous one, is not ready commercially.
The TD-SCDMA standard, developed by China’s Datang Telecomm Technology and Industry Group jointly with Germany’s Siemens, is one of the three 3G standards approved by the International Telecommunications Union. The others are the cdma2000 standard, developed by Qualcomm of the United States, the owner of code division multiple access (CDMA) patents; and the wideband CDMA (WCDMA) standard, from Europe. The adoption of a Chinese 3G standard while hosting the Olympics was meant to be significant to China.
I was among the first to argue that China should introduce the TD-SCDMA standard, at least along with the other two. I indicated in 2002 at a workshop on “Mobile and Mobility in China” in Stockholm: “Given the strategic importance of mobile communications and the political, economic, and even military considerations, one of China’s mobile communications operators is likely to implement a homegrown standard. And the worldwide delay in the transition to 3G mobile communications provides China with time and room for improvement of its own technology.”
Although it is a tough call for the Chinese government to decide which 3G standard(s) to use, I predicted the TD-SCDMA developer would receive “such a call provided it continues making progress in the commercialization of its technology.” However, “there is a more challenging job ahead.” I did not expect that it would take that long to make the 3G call.
In the pre-reform era, most of the research out of the Chinese labs ended at the prototype stage in one of the forms of three “pins” – yang pin, zhan pin, li pin (or samples, exhibits, and gifts), but never reached the stage of shang pin (commodities). The reform initiated in the mid-1980s has tried to solve the problem, but the results have been mixed. This time, while the Chinese government has given strong support to the TD-SCDMA standard, the commercialization of the technology has been the Achilles’ heel again.
In addition, given that other countries have been adopting cdma2000 and WCDMA standards, China’s telecom equipment makers such as Huawei and ZTE have to develop equipment based on them to compete globally. China Mobile, the world’s largest mobile carrier that operates the world’s largest GSM network, came to the game not only very late but also reluctantly; it has not shown enough interest in the Chinese standard as a migration to WCDMA seemed to be the easiest and most logical choice.
As a result, China could not roll out a full-blown 3G service on time for the Olympics. This in turn means that those users who have experienced high-speed and multimedia 3G service elsewhere in the world could not do the same at an Olympics that is otherwise a perfect high-tech festival.
Of course, this is not only a setback for those in China for the Olympics. In the name of stimulating indigenous innovation (zizhu chuangxin) and nurturing domestic enterprises, the delay ends up hurting not only Chinese consumers but also innovation capability and the global competitiveness of Chinese enterprises.
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(Cong Cao is a senior research associate with the Neil D. Levin Graduate Institute of International Relations and Commerce at the State University of New York. He received his PhD in sociology from Columbia University in 1997 and has worked at the University of Oregon and the National University of Singapore. Dr. Cao is interested in the social studies of science and technology with a focus on China. ©Copyright Cong Cao.)
