Research Impacted Merger Reviews by China’s Competition Law Enforcement

Title of Case Study: Promoting competition policy development and effective enforcement of competition laws in Hong Kong and Mainland China

 

The Economics and Finance Unit has produced a wealth of research output that has influenced competition policy development in terms of policy debate and design. The Unit’s research has also had direct impact on competition law enforcement in China by drafting various important regulations for the enforcement of China’s 2018 Anti-Monopoly Law, on the drafting of the merger control regulations in China, which have been used by the competition agency to assess over 3,000 merger notifications, and it has been used to directly assist the competition law enforcement agency in high-profile cases. The Unit has also introduced international best practices and up-to-date economic reasoning to China by translating books into Chinese and via case analysis.

 

Recommendations to the Anti-Monopoly Bureau

 

In 2010, the Unit was commissioned to undertake a project for the Anti-Monopoly Bureau of the Ministry of Commerce of China. This research significantly impacted merger reviews by China’s competition law enforcement agency from 2011 to 2018. The project outcomes produced two major reports. The first report surveyed state-of-the-art antitrust laws in economics and “best practices” in the major developed economies regarding merger control. It also revised the merger guidelines in the US, the UK, and Australia, and made recommendations for merger control policy in China.

 

Merger Guidelines for China

 

The second report proposed “Merger Guidelines” for China. These served as the basis for China’s Anti-Monopoly authority to promote its Interim Regulation on Assessing the Competition Impacts of Concentrations among Undertakings in 2011.

 

 

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