| dc.description.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. | en_US |
