| China’s industry associations were gradually formed along with the special environment of reform and opening up,and at the early stage of establishment,they were given certain power and functions,forming a synergy with "government supervision" and "social supervision",becoming an integral part of the "social governance" model.In January 2021,the central government issued the document "Action Plan for Building a High Standard Market System",in which it was clearly stated that industry associations and chambers of commerce should play a self-regulatory,intermediary,service and regulatory function in building a high-standard market system,and play a role in promoting the domestic internal circulation,accelerating the integration of international external circulation,and They also play an important role in promoting the construction of high standards in the market.However,trade associations,as concentrations of competitors in the same industry,are often the ideal platform for monopoly agreements.The reason for this is that trade associations,as the common expression of the will of their members within the industry,have the primary function of safeguarding the interests of industry operators within the association.As a trade association,it organizes its industry members to expand their markets and improve their efficiency.However,when market shares become large,or when their behavior has an anti-competitive effect,it can have a negative impact on the market.Therefore,most scholars agree that trade associations have an inherent urge and objective necessity to restrict competition.Since the implementation of the Anti-monopoly Law of the People’s Republic of China(hereinafter referred to as the "Antimonopoly Law")in 2008,the anti-monopoly enforcement agencies have punished as many as 45 cases of trade associations,among which 10 cases were punished for the insurance industry association,which also shows that trade associations are a high incidence area for the occurrence of monopoly behaviors.However,according to the general theory of antitrust law and the implementation experience of various countries,monopoly agreements do not have to be completely prohibited.Even though certain trade associations may be anticompetitive,enforcement needs to be treated differently because the roles assumed by each trade association are not exactly the same.Due to the homogeneity of insurance products,the insurance industry has certain special characteristics of its own,and insurance industry associations have certain special characteristics compared to general industry associations.Insurance associations have been playing their own self-regulatory role,providing a stronger intermediary and link between insurance companies and consumers as well as insurance regulators,guiding and coordinating the effective operation of the insurance market and promoting the development of the insurance industry.This paper examines the experience of anti-monopoly enforcement in the insurance field in the United States and the European Union,and analyzes the cases in which China’s insurance associations have been punished,suggesting that the self-regulatory behavior of insurance associations plays an indispensable and positive role in the development of the insurance market.It is mainly reflected that the law of large numbers,pricing theory and risk management theory,which are unique to the insurance industry,also provide relatively reasonable support for some of the anti-competitive behaviors of insurance industry associations to a certain extent.At the present stage,the marketization of the insurance industry in China has yet to be improved,and the communication and coordination among insurance companies in the development of insurance types and rate setting by the insurance association,although anti-competitive,can help maintain the solvency of insurance companies and protect the interests of consumers at the same time.From the perspective of national antitrust laws regulating the insurance industry,applying antitrust exemption rules to some self-regulatory behaviors of insurance associations is an effective way to reconcile the conflicting goals between antitrust laws regulating anti-competitive behaviors of industry associations and improving the economic efficiency of the insurance industry.The general idea of this thesis is to find the problems of self-regulatory convention exemptions of insurance industry associations in China by sorting out the cases,analyzing the causes of the problems,and proposing the path to solve the problems of China’s anti-monopoly law exemption system from the perspective of combining theoretical and empirical analysis,in a specific way that under the premise of prohibiting anti-competitive self-regulatory behaviors of insurance industry associations in principle and carrying out strict regulation,the reasonable and market The first part of the paper proposes to solve the problem of anti-competitive self-regulatory behavior of insurance associations,and to improve the flexibility of anti-monopoly law enforcement while achieving the goal of industry efficiency.The first part of this paper proposes to address the issue that certain self-regulatory behaviors of insurance industry associations have an indispensable and positive role in the insurance market.Through case studies,it questions the imagination that the positive effects of the present selfregulatory behavior of the insurance industry in improving the economic efficiency of the insurance market and protecting consumers are punished by the antitrust law.The second part analyzes the positive and negative roles of insurance industry associations in competition from a theoretical perspective,reflecting the conflicting goals between the self-regulatory behavior of insurance industry associations and the regulation of antitrust law,thus proposing that our antitrust exemption system as a basic rule for the coordination of multiple values can resolve this contradiction.The third part of the article provides an overview of the antitrust exemption system,firstly discussing the rationale of the antitrust exemption system and arguing that the antitrust exemption system is a basic system for coordinating competition policy and industry policy.Secondly,for the insurance industry,the necessity of the existence of self-regulatory acts of insurance industry associations is analyzed,so as to provide sufficient theoretical support for the application of exemptions by insurance industry associations.Finally,since this paper mainly analyzes from the perspective of applicable law,the author analyzes the legal systems of the United States and the European Union for the exemption system of the industry,discusses the legality of the conduct while exploring the feasibility of the application of different exemptions in China,analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of industry exemptions and conduct exemptions,and finally provides a practical explanation for the adoption of case-by-case exemptions in China’s insurance industry and whether the constitutive elements of exemptions are satisfied To provide a specific analysis of whether the constitutive elements of immunity are met,and to provide an operable path of analysis. |
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