The separation of the government from the industry in telecommunications sector was carried out in a gradualist or experimental manner to make sure a “reform without losers”. Both the supervising ministries and local governments became the “early winners” who were in favor of the status quo. A meaningful industrial reform started from 1994 but ended in 1998. China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) was just right on time to secure the outcome of the reforms. However, determined by the nature of uncompetitiveness and state monopoly, the telecommunications sector was against the liberalization requested by the GATT/WTO members. Close administrative and financial connections between the supervising ministry and subordinate sector caused a high degree of convergence of their interest that in turn implies that the ministry had strong incentives of protecting the sector. After having terminated the fragmented governance since 1995, the Ministry of Information Industry (MII) successfully prevented the sector from giving much concession compared to the other sectors during Sino- US negotiations. Although a limited concession was made, it is possible that the supervising ministries would not fulfil its commitment. On the one hand, the MII would refuse to cut off its administrative and financial ties with the enterprises. On the other hand, the enterprises would still be willing to be protected by the government for the monopolistic benefits. Even though the door is half-open to international competition, the Ministry had developed other means to block the entry of foreign service providers. A new form of fragmented governance is taking shape since 2003 when the State Asset Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) was founded. It created tensions between the bureaucracies and might create loopholes for the foreign entry in the future.

A political-macroeconomic model is developed to explain why small differences in fiscal decentralization may ultimately lead to dramatically di¤erent economic policies toward FDI hence starkly different amount of FDI flows into two otherwise identical developing countries. Too much fiscal decentralization hurts incentives of the central government while too little fiscal decentralization renders the local governments captured by the protectionist special interest group. Moreover, the local government's preference for FDI can be endogenously polarized and sensitive to fiscal decentralization. Calibration and counterfactual experiments results support fiscal decentralization as the major reason for China and India's nine-fold difference in FDI per capita.

We examine the diversification patterns of almost all publicly listed non-financial companies in China during the 2001 to 2005 period. More than 70 percent of the firms in our sample are diversified. We document that patterns of diversification strongly depend on firms’ political connections. Former local bureaucrats are more likely than other CEOs to enter multiple industries. This effect is particularly pronounced in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) that operate in weak institutional environments. These companies are particularly prone to entering low-growth, low-profitability, and unrelated industries. Consequently, the performance effects of diversification differ sharply across SOEs and private firms. While the latter earn a premium from diversifying their operations, SOEs do not. Our results are consistent with the view that provincial and local governments push Chinese SOEs into unattractive sectors of the economy and that politically connected CEOs use their relationships to build corporate empires.