“This law is enacted for the purposes of guarding against and prohibiting monopolistic practices, safeguarding fair market competition, improving economic efficiency, protecting the interests of consumers and public interests and promoting the healthy development of the socialist market economy.” So reads article one of the Chinese Anti-Monopoly Law (AML), adopted on 30 August, 2007, and due to come into effect on 1 August, 2008.
This law in many ways reflects the structure and shape of more established antitrust regimes, in particular that of the European Union (EU). Nevertheless, a number of important carve-outs, caveats, discretions and lacunae, coupled with institutional confusion and question-marks over effective judicial review, raise fears that the AML may lead to quite different decisional outcomes in practice from the outcomes that could be predicted under the EU rules and that it could be applied as a tool of Chinese industrial policy (raising protectionist fears).
