Proactive probes expected

Law enforcement agencies are expected to grow more confident and experienced in probing monopolistic practices, experts and lawyers say.

Jiang Qiping, an antitrust expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said recent cases offered points of reference and experience for law enforcement agencies, which will no doubt be more proactive in future investigations.

His comments came after the Shanghai High People’s Court ruled on Thursday that Johnson & Johnson in China violated the anti-monopoly law by enforcing a minimum price on its distributors.

“Market competition in China is improving,” Jiang said. “Behavior that oversteps the boundaries, which might not have been investigated in the past, cannot escape investigation now.”

Dai Jianmin, an antitrust lawyer at Dacheng Law Offices, said more effective law enforcement is possible because law enforcement agencies have “prepared themselves better” in the five years since the anti-monopoly law took effect in 2008.

The National Development and Reform Commission, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, and the Ministry of Commerce are the three government agencies that are assigned to look into monopolistic practices.

“Many supportive regulations and guidelines have been worked out in the past years, as necessary supplements to the essential law,” he said.

Dai said many lawyers have dubbed this year the “beginning of the antitrust era”, as investigations are being conducted in a more intense and experienced manner.

“Chinese consumers should have felt the benefit of anticompetition investigations, because many infant formulas have lowered their price,” Dai said, referring to a case in which authorities are looking into infant formula prices by Switzerland-based Nestle SA’s Wyeth, Mead Johnson Nutrition and Abbott Laboratories.

An online platform was set up on Monday, on which the State Administration for Industry and Commerce will publish up-to-date reports on its law enforcement practices, as part of efforts to promote investigative transparency.

Twelve cases have been published on the platform and the State Administration for Industry and Commerce said it has probed more than 1,300 cases of alleged anti- competitive practices since 2008.

Ren Airong, an official from the administration in charge of antitrust law enforcement, said the administration has received many complaints about suspected monopolies since 2008.