Formulating effective national strategies for market transformation

National initiatives for the development of information infrastructure have become critical to moving nations into the information age. In this paper, we are concerned with the features of information infrastructure development strategy, the social determinants for a country to choose a strategy and the principles of its design. We investigate China's telecommunications market transformation over the last two decades. China's experience is interesting as it is a case par excellence of a large transitory economy. We observe that China's national strategy was based on multiple social elements, not on technological prerogatives alone. This suggests that a national strategy for infrastructure construction should be derived from carefully considering both the technological options available as well as the social and political environment and the situation in the market structure. © 2005 JIT Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. All rights reserved.