Conclusions: Future look

Coming to the end of this book one can easily conclude that if there is one lesson to be drawn from the various chapters then it is certainly that the AML is certainly alive and kicking! In our previous book Tom Ulen still argued that there is an ‘uneasy case’ for China needing a competition law and the number of cases was still relatively modest, although already at that time it was reported that more than 50 merger cases had been brought under the AML. The number of cases is now surely spectacularly larger. The number of merger cases that would have been decided by MOFCOM is already over 400 and also private action cases are starting to take off. Again, in the previous volume we doubted whether victims of anti-competitive behaviour would use the road of the private law to obtain relief. Beth Farmer reports in Chapter 1 that already more than 40 private action cases have been filed. Farmer reminds us that for many years after its introduction, the US Sherman Act in fact led a relatively dormant life. This is certainly not the case for the AML where private actions, so she shows, were already filed soon after its entry into force. By the end of 2011 some 60 private action cases had been filed. The fact that the Supreme People’s Court issued a judicial interpretation explaining how private parties can bring competition law cases will undoubtedly provide a further stimulus in this respect.

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