Study On The Deficiencies And Improvements On The Administrative Responsibility Subject System Of China’s Antitrust Law

The basic function of the administrative liability system of the antitrust law is to compensate for the loss of overall social interests caused by the monopolistic behavior by relying on the investigation of the administrative liability of the violating subjects,and at the same time to set deterrence on other market subjects through effective sanctions.Along with the changes in the production and business models of enterprises,monopolistic behaviors are also showing different patterns.However on the other hand,the deterrent effect of its administrative liability system is not strong enough,mainly showing in three aspects: firstly,the lack of consideration for business managers in the determination of the legal liability of natural persons;secondly,the legislation does not take into full account of the mixed personality of enterprises,which leads to confusion in the determination of the legal responsibility of the decision-making and executing subjects of monopolistic acts;thirdly,thirdly,the legal liability for the implementers of administrative monopolies is set too leniently.From the experiences of the systems in foreign countries,the double penalty system can effectively respond to the problem of determining the legal responsibility of the enterprise management personnel.At the same time,various forms of accountability approaches for natural persons,such as fines,imprisonment and disqualification of directors from holding office,are also of reference.In addition,the single entity principle,which is widely applied in the United States and the European Union,also provides useful insights for solving the division of the relationship between the decision-making subject and the executing subject in monopolistic acts.Learning from the experiences of overseas systems,the improvement of the system of administrative liability subjects in China’s antitrust law should start from the following three aspects to enhance the deterrent effect of the system.Firstly,natural persons shall be included in the scope of administrative responsibility,and use dual penalty system and a variety of forms of responsibility to achieve effective investigation of the legal responsibility of business managers;secondly,in the case of mixed personality of operators,the participants of monopolistic acts shall be classified as controlling operators,executing operators and purely beneficial operators,and their administrative responsibilities shall be determined separately;thirdly,through the setting of confiscation of illegal income,aggravated administrative sanctions and suppression of the effectiveness of abstract administrative monopoly behavior and other ex post facto prosecution methods,to achieve the regulation over administrative monopoly.