Nation’s supreme court will toughen antitrust, monopoly proceedings

China’s supreme court on Thursday unveiled plans to toughen proceedings of the country’s competition legislation over the course of the 14th Five- Year Plan period ( 2021- 25), crystallizing a more effective regulatory framework for the platform- based economy.

Relevant judicial interpretations would be formulated at an opportune time to unequivocally rein in varied monopolistic and anti- competitive behavior, eliminate market blockages and boost fair competition, according to an intellectual property judicial protection plan for the five- year period published by the Supreme People’s Court ( SPC).

The supreme court pledges to properly handle monopolistic disputes in the internet sphere, improve antitrust judging rules for the platform economy, prevent the unchecked expansion of capital, and push for the regulated, healthy and sustainable development of online platforms.

Also on Thursday, the country’s market regulatory authorities held an antitrust work conference in Kunming, Southwest China’s Yunnan Province.

Describing 2020 as an iconic year for the country’s antitrust push, the State Administration for Market Regulation ( SAMR) revealed in a statement after the meeting that it closed 109 monopoly cases throughout the past year with penalties totaling 450 million yuan ($ 69.33 million).

The market regulator vowed to strengthen antitrust regulatory enforcement and improve its antitrust oversight capacities in the Thursday statement.

The judicial and regulatory toughening that envisions unified judging criteria is considered to put small firms on an equal footing with their bigger counterparts and push for the economy’s rebalancing to be innovated- oriented, experts said.

Judicial interpretations concerning the country’s antitrust and anti- unfair competition legislation are indispensable to plug loopholes in current laws against notably unfair competitive behavior and abuses of monopoly privileges that could result in depriving or restricting free and fair competition in the platform economy, Liu Junhai, director of the Institute of Business Law at Renmin University of China, told the Global Times on Thursday.

He cited the commonplace practice of burning cash that will quickly increase a platform’s user base, thus driving out its rivals before rendering the platform a dominant player that eventually dictate price hikes to its advantage.