Tighter curbs on monopoly to ensure fair competition

The State Council, China's Cabinet, has appointed Gan Lin, vice-minister of the State Administration for Market Regulation, as head of the anti-monopoly bureau, which went into operation on Thursday.

According to Wang Yong, State Councilor and head of the Anti-Monopoly Commission of the State Council, the establishment of the new bureau is an indication that China's anti-monopoly campaign is entering a new stage.

As fair competition is essential to a market economy, the government attaches great importance to improving the review mechanism for fair competition.

China has deepened its market supervision system reform by, for example, establishing the State Administration for Market Regulation and the new anti-monopoly bureau. This has helped build a coordinated and highly efficient anti-monopoly law enforcement system.

China will expedite the revision and improvement of laws and regulations, and make institutional arrangements to bolster the anti-monopoly campaign.

It will also make the policies and institutional arrangements for fair competition more systematic based on its national conditions, development stage, and international rules.

In the recent past, the authorities have investigated 345 monopoly cases of various kinds and 37,000 cases of unfair competition, and dealt with about 2,000 cases involving concentration of undertakings.

The authorities have cracked down on infringement of intellectual property rights and business secrets.

China has entered a stage of higher-quality development, with the total number of market entities exceeding 150 million. But with the expanding scale of enterprises, increasingly centralized industrial development, and accelerated online and offline integration of different sectors, China's economic development is facing new challenges.

Therefore, strengthening the anti-monopoly laws and regulations and promoting fair competition are necessary to not only improve China's socialist market economic system, but also promote higher-quality development and higher-level opening-up.

China will next strengthen the fundamental position of its competition policy and continue to improve its regulatory mechanism, accelerate the establishment of a multi-tiered and multi-dimensional competition supervision system, strengthen monopoly supervision, more strictly enforce laws in key areas and strive to build a market-based, law-based business environment.