Competition law and policy in a transitional China: transplantation and localisation

Abstract

Chinese competition law was conceived in the 1980s, soon after the post-Mao state adopted an open-door policy. Based primarily on the EC competition law model, an Anti-Monopoly Law (AML), as a principal pillar of Chinese competition law, has been formally on the legislative agenda since 1994 and was eventually enacted on 30 August 2007. Such delay was caused by a confluence of implicit and explicit social and legal-political factors. This thesis seeks to explore the interaction between competition law and its ecological environment in a context of the People's Republic of China (the PRC) in transition. It evaluates substantial and procedural rules of the AML and identifies the dynamic interface between Chinese competition law and industrial policy and sectoral regulations. The thesis seeks to demonstrate that since having a viable and sound institutional arrangement is crucial to any competition law and there are tensions between the transitional economy and political structure of the PRC, an optimal implementation of competition law and policy is difficult to achieve under the current climate. Nevertheless, the thesis demystifies an obscure relationship between the AML procedure on the one hand, and Chinese litigation rules and legal-political reality on the other. It thus questions an "all-or-nothing" perspective and explores how competition law and policy affects the marketplace and governance of the PRC. By so doing, the thesis aims to facilitate the understanding of a three-dimensioned Chinese competition law and policy, within which formal rules, informal constraints, and enforcement characteristics are perceptible through a prism of cultural-historical, comparative, and institutional analyses. The thesis includes nine chapters. The law is as stated at 30 August 2007.