Legal Regulation On China’s Administrative Monopoly: Predicament And Reform

Administrative monopoly by definition is the government and its agencies abusing administrative power, which will eliminate and restrain competition. Administrative monopoly not only presents an obstacle to free and fair competition and reduces the welfare of consumers, but leads to power rent-seeking and corruption, which has severely negative effects on government credibility. Consequently, it is imperative to regulate the administrative monopoly.With the further development of our country’s economic and political restructuring, however, our country’s administrative monopoly still emerged in endlessly and became increasingly complicated and diverse. Our country therefore successively enacted a series of anti-administrative monopoly laws and regulation, the most importantly one was Antitrust Law, which was enacted in 2007. Antitrust Law played a positive role in regulating administrative monopoly, but Antitrust Law still has its limitations, such as deficient legal liability, legal system and law enforcement efforts, which show that our country have great predicament of administrative monopoly regulation. Based on the present situation of our country’s administrative monopoly, this article deeply explores the predicament of administrative monopoly regulation through comparing and referring other countries’ existing legislation and law enforcement experience, and thus proposes relevant reform conception for the purpose to provide new thinking and viewpoint to our country’s administrative monopoly regulation.This article is divided into four parts. The first part elaborates the conceptual framework of administrative monopoly, including its concept, cause of formation and negative consequences, and significance of regulation. The second part summarizes the present situation of our country’s administrative monopoly and detailedly analyzes the predicament of our country’s current legal regulation on administrative monopoly, which is embodied on administrative monopoly legal liability and anti-administrative monopoly enforcement. The third part studies and analyzes the administrative monopoly regulation of several developed countries like US and EU countries, and the Russia which is a representative transition country, and as a result provides our country with experience and reference. Lastly, building upon our country’s reality, the forth part proposes reform ideas on our country’s administrative monopoly regulation regarding legislation and law enforcement, including legal liability, establishment of legal system and improvement of law enforcement situation, and hope to help regulate administrative monopoly and protect free and fair market competition.