Is Chinese Private Antitrust Litigation Ready to Take Off?

Jun 22, 2015

CPI Asia Column edited by Vanessa Yanhua Zhang (Global Economics Group) presents:

Is Chinese Private Antitrust Litigation Ready to Take Off? – Jiangxiao Athena Hou¹ (Zelle Hofmann Voelbel & Mason LLP)

China’s Anti-Monopoly Law (AML) provides for private right of action.  The landscape of antitrust enforcement in China is in stark contrast with that of the United States, where private litigation is a predominant means of antitrust enforcement. Chinese courts accepted 172 antitrust cases in the first five years after the AML became effective.²   Among these cases, 71 cases were filed in the fifth year.  A great majority of the actions are either dismissed by courts or settled for relatively insignificant amount of money.  A majority of these lawsuits involves allegations of abuse of market dominance and vertical constraint, and not price fixing.  While Chinese government enforcement agencies have increased enforcement in the last two years, there are no reported private actions following the government investigations.  This landscape questions whether Chinese civil litigation procedures provide a framework conducive to the development of private antitrust enforcement.

There is no procedural guidance to private antitrust litigation in the AML.  China’s current civil litigation rules provide neither powerful discovery tools nor mechanisms for individual consumers to efficiently litigate their claims collectively.