Healey, Deborah --- "China’s Anti-Monopoly Law: Agent of Competition Enhancement or Engine of Industrial Policy? – Comment on Wang and Su" [2012] ELECD 421; in Zimmer, Daniel (ed), "The Goals of Competition Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: The Goals of Competition Law

Editor(s): Zimmer, Daniel

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9780857936608

Section: Chapter 21

Section Title: China’s Anti-Monopoly Law: Agent of Competition Enhancement or Engine of Industrial Policy? – Comment on Wang and Su

Author(s): Healey, Deborah

Number of pages: 10

Extract:

21. China's Anti-Monopoly Law:
agent of competition enhancement
or engine of industrial policy?
Comment on Wang and Su
Deborah Healey* 57




1 INTRODUCTION

Professor Wang's chapter comprehensively considers the question of
whether the Anti-Monopoly Law ("AML") of China is an agent of change
or an engine of industrial policy. She concludes that going forward com-
petition policy will become a central plank of all economic policies and
that industrial policy will gradually be aligned to competition policy in the
continuing development of the market economy.
My comments on Professor Wang's chapter are set out below.


2 UNIQUE POSITION OF CHINA

I would like to preface my remarks with two points which I consider to be
foundational to any discussion of the issue at hand.
First, in any assessment of the AML it is essential to acknowledge that
the Chinese Government has clearly recognized the importance of com-
petition as a market regulator by adopting a competition law at a time
when China's market economy is still developing. Many other countries
implemented their competition laws at a much later time in their economic
development, when their markets were more mature. Those countries
enacted competition laws to attack anti-competitive conduct in an exist-
ing market economy, rather than implanting the competition law in a
developing economy.


* LLM (Syd), Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law, University of New South
Wales.

398
 Comment on Wang and Su 399

Secondly, competition laws of other countries are not static ­ they ...