By Wu Peng, Cheng Cheng, Zhang Xiangyu & Zhang Yilan –
As an integral part of efforts to safeguard a sound market order, antitrust civil litigation, a mechanism widely adopted by countries with a well-established antitrust system, has been in place in China for years. Antitrust civil litigation shares the same procedures with other civil litigations, generally, while following some special rules customized to accommodate its characteristics and purposes. In this article, we briefly introduce the antitrust civil litigation system under the Chinese laws, then we compare antitrust civil litigation with investigations initiated by antitrust enforcement agencies from several crucial aspects, including the standard of case docketing, evidence collection, cost, etc., and give suggestions to alleged victims of monopolistic conduct in choosing between these two approaches. We also briefly mention a hotly discussed new type of antitrust civil litigation, which may be helpful to companies that face risks of being alleged monopolists.
