The Practitioner's Guide to Antitrust in China

Management and legal counsel of foreign companies operating in China as well as those outside China with Chinese business desperately need to keep up with the fast-paced antitrust developments in the most dynamic market in the world.

The author of this book, Becky Koblitz, is a seasoned antitrust lawyer for a major U.S. law firm in Beijing. She has decades of legal experience as a prosecutor at the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as in-house counsel for a German subsidiary of a major American real estate development company and as a lawyer at law firms globally. Her rich experience in the U.S., Europe and China, now often regarded as the three centers of global antitrust, makes her the perfect candidate to write a book on China’s antitrust development.

Her book is a quick read that tells what there is to know about China’s antitrust enforcement and includes practical advice and examples for the various aspects of antitrust: dealing with competitors, dealing within the supply chain, mergers, etc. She writes in a straight-forward language such that non-antitrust lawyers can get beyond stock phrases like “illicit price coordination,” “abuse of dominance,” or “unilateral effect.” Her book is a valuable and practical “cookbook” for antitrust compliance training and beyond.

Another feature of the book is that it provides both legal and economic perspectives on antitrust analysis in China, which is important given that economic analysis is increasingly adopted by China’s antitrust agencies and the Chinese courts. Thus understanding the logic and methodology behind economic analysis as applied to Chinese cases is key to conducting proper antitrust legal analysis that is tailored to the Chinese context.

To write a book on the burgeoning antitrust enforcement and practice for the constantly evolving Chinese market is a real challenge. The trick, and it is not as easy as you would think, is to write simple declarative sentences, understandable to the antitrust layman, and at the same time not lose the rigor of antitrust analysis. I think this relatively short book is a remarkable achievement in meeting such a challenge, but I invite you to judge for yourself.