China’s application of competition law in the digital economy in the past three years has attracted attention worldwide. One significant reason is because of the regulation of VIE-structured transactions. For more than 10 years after the implementation of the Anti-Monopoly Law, seldom VIE-structured transactions have been reviewed by the competition authority, which means, almost the whole internet industry hasn’t made notifications of concentrations and there were no investigations for a decade. The whole thing has been turned around by end of 2020, when the State Administration of Market Regulation released the Guidelines for Anti-monopoly in the Field of Platform Economy (Draft for Solicitation of Comments) in November and specifically stated that VIE-structured transactions should be notified with SAMR if the thresholds are satisfied. Ever since then, SAMR has officially kicked off the review of the concentration of Internet undertakings, many historical transaction issues have surfaced, and new investments have been imposed with the notification obligation. This article attempts to summarize the characteristics of anti-monopoly law enforcement concerning Internet industry operators in China by reviewing the law enforcement in the past three years and conduct a summary analysis of some of the problems.

By Roger Xin Zhang[1]

 

China’s application of competition law in the digital economy in the past three years has attracted attention worldwide. One significa

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