Antitrust Analysis Of The “Hub-and–spoke Conspiracies”

Monopoly agreements between business operators,abuse of dominant market position by business operators and concentration of business operators which has or may have an effect of eliminating or restricting competition are regulated in Chinese anti-monopoly law,among which monopoly agreements can be divided into horizontal agreements between competitors and vertical agreements between upstream and downstream dealers.With the rapid development of the economy,the business models are inclined to be mixed with horizontal agreements and vertical agreements,among which the hub-and-spoke conspiracy is the most prominent.From the point of view of antitrust law and economics,hub-and-spoke conspiracy cannot be defined as the simple vertical agreements or a combination of vertical and horizontal agreements.Searching through the US case law,hub-and-spoke conspiracy was not described as a legal term until the case Toys “R” Us(1988).However,the model of hub-and-spoke conspiracy has appeared in the case Klor’s(1959)with the similar one showed in case Interstate Circuit(1942).Meanwhile Chinese anti-monopoly law has been issued for only ten years with the comparison of the Sherman Act issued in 1890 in the US.Only a few articles have been published in China upon hub-andspoke conspiracy with no case being analyzed as hub-and-spoke conspiracy by the court or relevant authority.With the reference of relevant hub-and-spoke conspiracy cases in US courts,this article will analyze the key components of hub-and-spoke conspiracy,with comparison of abusing dominant market power,horizontal agreement and vertical agreement to further improve the analysis methods towards hub-and-spoke conspiracy.