Originally Published in Law360, March 9, 2012.

Unlike other jurisdictions where antitrust enforcement is centralized, in China three agencies enforce the Chinese Anti-Monopoly Law (“AML”). The Ministry of Commerce handles mergers, while cases related to anti-competitive conduct are split between the National Development and Reform Commission (“NDRC”) and the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (“SAIC”). The NDRC handles price-related violations and SAIC the nonprice-related violations. The AML has been in effect since August 2008 and continues to evolve as these three agencies adopt additional regulations in order to provide more guidance on and clarification of such aspects as terminology, procedures and enforcement.

Merger Control

In the first three years, the major focus has been merger filings. Merger notifications continue to be time-consuming (some taking up to six months or more), and involve elaborate formalities and investigations which sometimes were not necessary. Last year, 160 investigations were completed (in comparison to 25 in 2008, 80 in 2009 and 117 in 2010). Of those 160, four were cleared with conditions (in comparison to one in 2008, four in 2009, one in 2010), bringing us to a total of 10 conditional clearances, all involving foreign companies.