Bosses of China Mobile, Unicom and Telecom reshuffled as Beijing revamps state-owned telecommunications firms

The three major state-backed telecommunications network operators in China have reshuffled their senior leadership amid ongoing efforts to upgrade their mobile and fixed-line broadband infrastructure across the country.

China Mobile, the world’s largest wireless network operator by number of subscribers, on Monday named Shang Bing, previously a vice-minister at regulator the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), as its new chairman, replacing the retirement-bound Xi Guohua.

That announcement was followed by separate notices from China Unicom and China Telecom to the Hong Kong stock exchange of a high-level switch in their senior management.

Unicom chairman and chief executive Chang Xiaobing has resigned to take on the same roles at China Telecom. Wang Xiaochu also left his duties as chairman and chief executive at China Telecom to assume the same roles at Unicom.

Those changes validated recent wide speculation in the mainland Chinese media about a big leadership reshuffle at the three nationwide telecommunications services providers.

“We see these changes broadly positive for Unicom, negative for China Telecom and neutral for China Mobile,” Bernstein Research analyst Jimmy Chen said yesterday.