The anti-monopoly law is the basic law to stop monopoly, protect market competition and maintain market order. It is also an important law to improve the market structure, ensure economic security and ensure the basic role of the market in allocating resources. It plays an extremely important role in safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of operators and consumers, promoting technological innovation and progress, improving the competitiveness of enterprises, and ensuring the healthy, sustainable and coordinated development of the national economy. Accordingly, China’s Anti monopoly Law has established a dual track anti-monopoly law enforcement system of administrative law enforcement and civil justice.

1. Administrative Responsibility

2. Civil liability

According to the provisions of the Provisions of the Supreme People’s Court on the Application of Law to the Trial of Civil Disputes Caused by Monopoly, natural persons, legal persons or other organizations who have suffered losses due to monopoly acts and disputes arising from the violation of the Anti monopoly Law due to contract contents, articles of association of industry associations, etc., have the right to file civil proceedings with the people’s court according to law, and the corresponding operators Industry associations and organizations with the function of managing public affairs may become eligible defendants in antitrust civil disputes.

According to the civil laws and regulations related to anti-monopoly and the existing judgments, the main forms of civil liability for monopoly acts are to stop monopoly acts and compensate for losses.

3. Criminal responsibility

Article 54 of the current Anti monopoly Law stipulates that the staff of the anti-monopoly law enforcement agencies should be held accountable for their suspected administrative violations and criminal crimes according to law. The draft amendment to the anti-monopoly law under consideration has deleted the statement of criminal responsibility in this article, and changed the mixed statement of the executive and criminal responsibilities of the staff of the anti-monopoly law enforcement agencies into the statement of special funds for administrative responsibility. Article 67, which is revised in conjunction with this article, is embedded with an independent clause on criminal responsibility, which clearly states that “those who violate the provisions of this law and constitute a crime shall be investigated for criminal responsibility according to law”.

The adjustment of the draft means that in the field of anti-monopoly, compared with the previous criminal provisions on the duty related crimes of law enforcement officials, more monopoly acts may be included in the scope of criminal law regulation in the future. However, at present, there are no provisions on monopoly related crimes in China’s criminal law, so it is worth paying attention to whether they will be modified later through amendments.

Lawyer Wang Fen

Graduated from the Northwest Institute of Political Science and Law, Economic Law Department, with nearly 10 years of legal service experience, and high customer satisfaction;

Advocate that the law should serve the business, be able to go deep into the frontline of the consulting unit, and provide the consulting unit with operable and valuable services that can pre control risks;

It can independently research and develop topics and provide daily legal training for enterprises, including labor law, contract law, shareholder disputes, intellectual property rights and competition law.