Research Focus: Bureaucratic Politics & Competition Law in China

Research conducted by Dr Angela Huyue Zhang, Lecturer in Competition Law, King’s College London suggests that bureaucratic politics are important determinants of competition law enforcement in China. 

Her research, forthcoming in the autumn issue of the Cornell International Law Journal this year, finds that competition law enforcement in China is a highly pluralistic process involving officials from various central ministries and local governments with overlapping functions and divergent missions and objectives.  Their incentive structure and the formal and tacit rules of the Chinese bureaucracy shape the enforcement outcome of China’s Anti-Monopoly Law. 

Dr Zhang said “Contrary to the conventional notion that Chinese policy makers have a single, unifying goal to maximize national interests, I find that Chinese antitrust policy outcome largely results from struggle among government agencies who decide antitrust issues in terms of the personal consequence for their stature and power. “

Dr Zhang joined King’s as Lecturer in July 2013. Prior to this, she practiced law for six years at offices of international law firms in China, United States and Europe.  Angela Zhang is a graduate of Peking University and the University of Chicago.

The article is available on the The Dickson Poon School of Law’s e-Journal here.

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