Ⅲ．Legal Governance of Price Monopoly Agreement in the Automotive Industry
Governance, in addition to impeachment, sanction, punishment, should also emphasize the guidance of the legal compliance and positive direction to avoid illegal behavior and its consequences．The content and objectives of the rule of law in China pertain to the “three-in-one”system of the state, the government and the society of rule of law, with its emphasis on “governance”and its path from “the rule of law to good governance”, till the “harmonious governance”of the country and the society．In this process, the significance of the rule of law is to attain a law-abiding state, society and citizens through “scientific legislation, strict law enforcement, judicial justice, and comprehensive compliance”．Against the background of emphasizing the comprehensive promotion of modernization of the national governance system and governance capabilities, the method of enhancing sanctions and huge fines is not implementing the anti-monopoly law, nor its ultimate goal．As the core of anti-monopoly law, the legal enforcement should transfer from “severe penalty”to “good governance”, improving legitimate operators' comprehensive competitiveness in the domestic and international market through standardizing the free competition order in the market．Concerning the automotive industry, emphasis should be laid upon effective protection and promotion of legitimate operators' competitiveness by enforcing the anti-monopoly law and the enhancement of national operators' effective law-abiding competition in the international market by regulating free and fair competition in the domestic automobile market．For this reason, the author proposes the following aspects to promote the legal governance of the price monopoly agreements that still exist in the domestic automobile market.
A．To Establish a Sound Idea of Anti-monopoly Law Application in Compliance With the Time
Idea goes before practice．Only through establishing a sound idea can we ensure a right direction and attain satisfactory practices．Specifically, as to the implementation of the anti-monopoly law, in addition to various forms of price monopoly agreement endlessly emerging in the automobile industry, we should actively promote the anti-monopoly law enforcement and, more importantly, understand the purpose of legislation of the Anti-monopoly Law comprehensively and establish a sound idea of the application of the anti-monopoly law．A further exploration of China's legislative process of Anti-monopoly Law as well as the development history of the anti-monopoly law around the world reveals that without exception, they all manifest such an idea, “the goal of making and implementing the anti-monopoly law is not a single one, but has the nature encompassing a temporal spirit, pluralism, and changeability.”[1]We must consider the current domestic and international economic development and establish a sound idea of the application of the anti-monopoly law; i.e．we not only need to curb the various illegal behaviors mentioned above that exclude and restrict competition in the automobile industry but also should provide compliance guidelines for operators engaged in the market competition of the automotive industry．To take a huge fine is not the purpose, and to establish a standardized and regulated free competition market is just a means, while the ultimate goal of the anti-monopoly law is to serve the people and the society so as to promote surplus of the operators (producers) and consumers and hence improve the total social surplus．To serve the society is the basic principle of anti-monopoly legal governance.[2]In terms of the legal governance of the price monopoly behavior in the automobile industry discussed in this thesis, we particularly uphold the basic principle of “learning from the past mistakes to avoid future ones; curing the sickness to save the patient”．The key is to carry out compliance guidelines for operators, in order to achieve the legitimate interests of consumers, to encourage consumers to participate in the supervision of the market competition order in the automotive industry and establish a three-in-one concept of anti-monopoly law application as “operators' self-discipline, regulators' external discipline and consumers' supervision”in detail.
B．To Sort Out the Relationship Between Automotive Industry Standards and Regulations on Competition
The automotive industry is the pillar industry in China's economic development．The history of planned economy and its influence has made it possible that the establishment and development of the automotive industry standards precedes the emergence and implementation of regulations on competition．The industry standards have a much greater impact on the current development of the automotive industry than that of the regulations．This particular industrial development process and operation model originated from the specific national circumstances of different socialistic periods, and the hysteresis and alienation of the operation of the related systems．If we plan to impose systematic and comprehensive legal governance over the current automotive industry to rule out the illegal behavior of excluding and restricting competition, especially the prevalence of price monopoly agreements, we must sort out the relationship between the current industry standards and regulations on competition, demolish the institutional trap, and clarify the operators' behavior guidelines.[3]
In fact, the afore-mentioned cases of price monopoly agreement in the automotive industry show that whether the horizontal price monopoly agreements or vertical price monopoly agreements are mostly related with the market guidance pricing behavior of the automotive suppliers (including automobile manufacturers and sole distributors) and their absolute control over the auto sales market．In addition to the afore-mentioned Article 18 of Administration that stipulates that “Automobile suppliers shall strengthen administration of brand sales and service network, standardize sales and after-sale services, and announce in a timely manner the list of automobile brand sales and service dealers that have been authorized and dealers whose authorization have been cancelled．They shall not sell automobiles to dealers that have not been authorized for automobile brand sales or those that do not satisfy the conditions for such business”and Article 25 that stipulates “Automobile brand dealers shall engage in automobile brand sales, after-sale services and supply of parts within the scope authorized by automobile suppliers”, there are many other articles in Administration with the purpose to maintain and establish automobile suppliers' authority and commanding position in the automobile brand sales market, which has made automobile manufacturers and sole distributors occupy the dominant position in the sales channels and market pricing.
Although the Administration contains Article 21 that stipulates automobile suppliers shall sign business authorization contracts with automobile brand dealers．The business authorization contract shall be fair and impartial, and may not contain terms discriminatory to automobile brand dealers, and Article 24 that states automobile suppliers may not interfere with the business activities of the automobile brand dealers outside the business authorization contract．These articles only restrict the control of the automobile suppliers and cannot essentially counteract the automobile suppliers' right to maintain brand sales and manage service networks．In this case, the automobile manufacturers and sole distributors will voluntarily urge the downstream distributors to conform to and implement their business strategies and price regulations in order to protect their product brands and maximize their own profits．The right of market guidance is therefore abused and the price monopoly agreements emerge．In order to further promote the anti-monopoly law implementation, to better protect and promote the market competition in the automotive industry, to safeguard the rights and interests of the consumers, to better achieve the legitimate growth of the interests of all automotive industry operators, the industrial rules and regulations related to the automotive industry such as the Administration should be timely revised in order to better cater for the development of the automobile industry and the needs for free competition.
In September of 2014, the Ministry of Transport in cooperation with the National Development and Reform Commission and other ten ministries jointly issued Guidelines for the Promotion of Transformation, Upgrading and Service Quality Improvement of Automobile Repairing Industry (hereinafter referred to as the Guidelines), requesting to introduce a supervision system to safeguard the rights and interests of consumers, to break the monopoly of parts and components, to promote information disclosure, to adhere to fair competition in the market and to let the market play a decisive role in the allocation of resources.[4]In February 2015, the General Office of Ministry of Transport issued Management Approach to Implementing Disclosure of the Technical Information of Automobile Maintenance (Draft) (hereinafter referred to as Draft), requesting the relevant automobile manufacturing industry association to strengthen the industrial self-discipline, to urge the automobile manufacturers to implement the disclosure system of technical vehicle maintenance information, so as to promote the fair competition in the automobile maintenance market．In the Draft, the Ministry of Transport requires the car producers to disclose the technical maintenance information according to relevant regulations within 6 months after a new car model is launched and indicate the launch time of the new car model on the public information websites so that car manufacturers can determine the price of the technical information of car maintenance according to law, but their pricing of the information service must be fair, reasonable and scientific.[5]In April of 2015, on the day when Mercedes Benz was fined, China Automobile Dealers Association stated publicly that they have submitted to the Ministry of Commerce the report pressing for the new Administrative Measures for Implementing the Disclosure of Automobile Repair Technical Information in order to change auto manufacturers' position of absolute control protected by the existing Administration through the new regulations and effectively regulate and reduce the price monopoly agreements in the automobile industry．Shen Jinjun, chairman of China Automobile Dealers Association said,“in fact, in those anti-monopoly cases, most of the car dealers are in a passive state．We hope that anti-monopoly law enforcement can make the automobile manufacturers review the compliance and legitimacy of their market behavior, and at the same time, the coercive policies will be effectively relaxed, and further, the vertical monopoly in the automobile industry and the abuse of market dominance and other phenomena will be alleviated.”[6]
The proposals for the adjustment of the industry management norms and operation model made by industry regulators and industry associations reflects that the automobile industry standards do not fit the needs for current and future free competition in the automotive industry．A lot of industry standards exist due to historical reasons and still have historical significance, but they do not conform to the current implementation of comprehensive competition supervision and its regulations．We do not advocate that they should be completely abolished, but suggest that those standards should be adapted to facilitate the healthy development of the automotive industry and also help other pillar industries to conduct marketization reforms．Because in those industries, the state is the largest investor, or, in some cases, even directly becomes the “operator”, it still takes time to fully achieve free and fair competition, but realistic progressive reform is approaching.
C．To Optimize Anti-monopoly Law Enforcement in the Automobile Industry
Due to the fact that the automotive industry plays an important role in the national economic development, it has stepped into steady development since 2014 despite, and in some places, some automobile manufacturers and dealers have suffered a large amount of slow-moving inventory．Against this background, the National Development and Reform Commission in conjunction with local anti-monopoly law enforcement agencies conducted the anti-monopoly probe and enforcement, which has attracted attention from all walks of life, including consumers, automobile manufacturers, automobile dealers, and even foreign automobile manufacturers and their sole distributors in China．For a time, it caused a temporary clamor.[7]In face of this, on the one hand, the anti-monopoly law enforcement agencies still need to adhere to the rule of law, construct and maintain free and fair competition in the market environment; on the other hand, under automobile industry's recession, related industry management departments should not ignore the appeals of the industry associations, major automotive suppliers and auto brand dealers．They need to take active actions in forceful response to the problems they are responsible of in the hard situation of the automotive industry．In addition to the adjustment of the relationship between industry management and free competition, the related industry management departments should also optimize the approaches of competition supervision, so as to maintain effective competition in the market, secure stable development of the industry, and avoid simple law enforcement and the risk of fragmented law enforcement resulting from lack of an overall plan．The optimization of the anti-monopoly law enforcement in the automotive industry and prudent and rational competition law enforcement are conducive to the systematic governance of the anti-competition cases in the automotive industry.
Take the auto suppliers' restriction of products resale price imposed on auto brand dealers we particularly mentioned above as an example, this phenomena is relatively common in the automotive industry and cannot simply be prohibited, but needs reasonable analysis according to the specific situations．In fact, in terms of the automotive market competition and development, RPM is a “double-edged sword”．On the one hand, RPM to a large extent has the effect of excluding and restricting competition．For example, auto manufacturers such as FAW Mazda, FAW Volkswagen urged auto dealers to implement price regulations and forcefully restricted prices of whole cars, parts and components and after-sales repair and maintenance．This type of price control will likely lead to suppression of free competition, and will artificially hinder the price formation process through the market competition mechanism．Finally, the operators in the automotive industry, including automotive suppliers and dealers would obtain monopoly profits while consumers need to pay unfair high prices and pay for the illegal behaviors of excluding and restricting competition．This kind of RPM behavior has obvious anti-competition effect, harms the interests of consumers and should be strictly prohibited．On the other hand, some RPM behaviors may be conducive to the competition and help to realize the interests of consumers．In fact, any transactions reached and conducted would all cause anti-competition on other potential trading parties．We cannot therefore prohibit all transactions; instead, we need to make distinction between “good”and “bad”transactions.[8]In anti-monopoly legislation and enforcement in other countries and regions of the world, consumers' interests as the applicable “reasonable rule”is, without exception, the key factor for consideration．To judge whether the RPM behavior is legitimate, we must decide how consumers' interests are realized．Generally speaking, although RPM behavior will objectively enable consumers to pay higher prices to obtain a product or service, it cannot be simply considered an impairment of consumers' interests．Since the higher prices could bring consumers a better pre-sale, in-sale and after-sale service, if we need to evaluate the effect of such RPM on the interests of consumers, in addition to factors such as the price of commodities or services, we must examine whether the operators have transferred or partially transferred the extra benefits derived from implementation of such RPM to consumers as well.
The legality judgment of RPM in the automotive industry is quite specific, which is needy of multi-dimensional evaluation of the possible impact of RPM on competition interests and consumers' interests．Through the RPM protocol, operators in the automotive industry can set reasonable prices based on necessary costs to maintain automobile brand value, technical quality and sales service level, to avoid the occurrences such as serious deviation of prices from the necessary social cost of commodities and services resulting from unfair market competition or even vicious competition, and to avoid the increasing risk that consumers might buy fake and shoddy goods and services during the process of purchase because the price is seriously low out of the price war．Through reasonable, justifiable and necessary RPM, a reasonable equilibrium between operators' interests (including interests amongst operators) and consumers' interests might be attained so that, to a certain extent, the interests of consumers, maintenance of a healthy market competition order can be guaranteed．Therefore, in the automotive industry, in order to affirm illegality of RPM, we recommend the use of the rule of reason, i.e．to conduct careful and comprehensive consideration of various factors and hence make a judgment that can help to protect consumers' legitimate rights and interests and facilitate the coordinated growth of consumers' interests and operators' interests.[9]The sound and quality anti-monopoly law enforcement practices will send a warning to other potential offenders, which is conducive to guiding the automobile manufacturers and dealers at all levels to spontaneously adjust similar agreements as RPM．Through self-correction of the market players and self-perfection of the market mechanism, a market-oriented economic environment of upgraded competition and compliance can be created.
The anti-monopoly law enforcement agencies cannot simply treat all kinds of existing monopoly agreements in the automotive industry in a one-size-fits-all manner, but instead, they need to examine whether those agreements lead to the effect of seriously excluding and restricting competition and cause damage to the interests of consumers．In this process, in order to make the enforcement of the anti-monopoly law convincing to all and maintain and promote the interests of the whole society, it is necessary to establish a fair, impartial and open law enforcement procedure, and hence the authority of the anti-monopoly law from the perspective of procedure instead of the reinforcement of deterrence and punishment of the illegal competition behavior with heavy fines and other punishments on entity interests．As for the anti-monopoly regulations in the automotive industry discussed in this thesis, after the anti-monopoly law enforcement agency locates a case or receives a report, if the preliminary investigation has confirmed the monopoly agreement, they should fully listen to the defense and pleas from both car manufacturers and car dealers at all levels．Generally speaking, the law enforcement agencies should give the manufacturer and the dealer a reasonable time of period to prepare for an open hearing or other open and impartial means, and then listen to their explanations on whether their agreements have the effect of excluding and restricting competition．The technical factors in the anti-monopoly cases, in the process of law enforcement, in addition to complying with the relevant laws and regulations, those cases also need investigation of industry standards, industry practices and the application of industry technologies．During the law enforcement process, we should encourage experts to participate in it, start relevant procedures to put the expert opinions into consideration and hence strengthen professionalism and credibility of anti-monopoly law enforcement．In addition, in order to make a law enforcement judgment, we should fully consider the reasonable procedures for proof provision and confirmation, and reasonable distribution of the burden of proof, to ensure compliance with the law in the process of law enforcement and protection of legal rights and reasonable arguments of relative party in the system.
D．Strengthen the Local Anti-monopoly Law Enforcement
The legal governance over the illegal behaviors of excluding and restricting competition in the automotive industry is a systematic, comprehensive and long-term project, especially in the critical period of China's economic and social transformation when there are numerous problems to be solved to ensure stability, promote development, adjust the structure and eliminate longstanding malpractices．A lack of competitiveness in the automotive industry and a multitude of chaotic phenomena such as the illegal behaviors of excluding and restricting competition reflect the common problems in the industry governance and reforms of the series of monopolistic competition existing in our country.[10]The quality of the relevant legal governance not only has impact on the healthy development of the automotive industry but also on the design and selection of the anti-monopoly law enforcement in other monopolistic competition industries, which must be paid more attention．In addition to the need to update the idea and methods of law enforcement, we should also strengthen the local anti-monopoly law enforcement and conduct effective legal governance of all types of competition exclusion and restriction behavior based on the existing environment of China's law enforcement and economic development.
The monopolistic competition is apparently a characteristic of China's automotive industry, manifested by the local and industrial development layout with the local government as the main model and with the modern market, large enterprises, large companies, consortia as the basic market elements．For example, FAW located in Jilin Province, DFAC in Hubei Province, GAC in Guangdong Province, SAIC in Shanghai, and BAIC in Beijing are all characterized by geographical and industrial features．The governance of anti-competition in the automotive industry is not only in need of active and serious law enforcement at the national level but also of special attention to the local law enforcement．Addressing the illegal behavior of local and industrial monopoly requires both central support and active participation of the local government and hence local anti-monopoly enforcement has become one of our current focuses to promote China's anti-monopoly law enforcement.[11]
The primary force of China's anti-monopoly law enforcement is mainly located in the implementation at the national level while the implementation at the private level is relatively weak．NDRC is the main law enforcement agency at the national level involved in the price monopoly cases．Price Supervision and Inspection and Anti-monopoly Bureau of NDRC is the department responsible for details and its subordinate departments directly related to anti price monopoly law enforcement include Anti Price Monopoly Investigation I and II with a relatively smaller scale of personnel to conduct investigations, affirmation and treatment of illegal price monopoly behavior nationwide．In order to resolve the conflict between “more cases and less human resource”while dealing with cases of illegal price monopoly, Item 2 of Article 10 of the Anti-monopoly Law stipulates, “The authority for enforcement of the Anti-monopoly Law under the State Council may, in light of the need of work, empower the appropriate departments of the people's governments of provinces, autonomous regions or municipalities directly under the Central Government to take charge of relevant enforcement of the Anti-monopoly Law in accordance with the provisions of this Law.”This article provides legitimacy for local anti-monopoly law enforcement agencies, and in line with this, we must increase their strength and scope of governance.[12]
In fact, the local anti-monopoly enforcement agencies have already played a positive role in anti-monopoly regulations of some regions．Recently, cases including “Maotai, Wuliangye case”, “Shanghai Old Temple Gold Case”, and “Jiangsu Benz case”have jointly been investigated and treated by local and central anti-monopoly law enforcement agencies because of their illegal behavior of eliminating and restricting competition and thereafter the effect of the practice has been proved sound．Discussions on domestic anti-monopoly law enforcement were found in practice, but were not found enough in theory．The only related research concerned the interpretation of Item 2, Article 10 of the Anti-monopoly Law which discussed rationality, feasibility, and operability of local anti-monopoly law enforcement.[13]Detailed feasibility and procedural guarantees were not discussed in depth and were in need of further research and experiment．The anti-monopoly law enforcement in the automotive industry with the nature of both local and industrial monopoly must be advanced by related local law enforcement agencies．In the aspects of investigation, affirmation and treatment, local law enforcement agencies can supervise the market situation in reality more effectively, capture real market signals, conduct investigation and obtain evidence, resolve conflicts and contradictions in the law enforcement, and facilitate the law enforcement work．For the next step, we need to further specify the rights and liabilities of anti-monopoly law enforcement agencies and establish reasonable and proper weighting mechanism．For example, list the powers of local anti-monopoly law enforcement agencies; build effective and appropriate responsibility mechanism, specify the duties of local law enforcement agencies, promote local anti-monopoly law enforcement activities from both positive and negative aspects, and intensify local anti-monopoly law enforcement efforts．It is certain that in this process, through the establishment of a list of powers and responsibilities, strengthening the timely communication and close cooperation with the central anti-monopoly law enforcement agencies is particularly important, so as to ensure orderly, effective, forceful, legitimate, and reasonable local anti-monopoly law enforcement.
—Translated by WANG Haiping from
Legal Science (《法学》), Vol.8, 2015
[1] Chen Bing, Erasing the Misunderstanding on China's New Anti-monopoly Law From a Comparative Study, Frontiers of Law in China, Vol.6(04), 2011, pp.609-634; Chen Bing, Defending Anti-monopoly Law of the People's Republic of China, Economic Law Review, Vol.19, 2010, pp.114-151.
[2] See Chen Bing, Coordinate Development of Anti-monopoly Law Enforcement and Consumer Protection, Legal Science, 2013(9).
[3] On June 12, 2015, Price Supervision and Inspection and Anti-monopoly Bureau of NDRC officially announced the draft formulation of the first anti-monopoly guideline, i.e．The Anti-monopoly Guideline of the Automotive Industry (referred to as Guideline for short)．However, the formulation of a guideline satisfactory to all parties is not as “easy”as punishment of a single case．It involves confrontation of adjustment of the existing industry standard system and the balance of interests of all parties behind the standard system, which is very difficult．Objectively speaking, the influence of the current regulation mechanism of the automobile industry in China is still greater than the deterring effect of the anti-monopoly law penalty．Therefore, the reform of industry standards and coordination of the relationship between industry standard and competition standard will be at present the priority among priorities concerning the construction of free and fair competition order in construction and maintenance of China's automobile industry and other industries of monopolistic competition．See Wang Ying, Xin Ying, The Automotive Monopoly Framework Did Not Fade in the Industry: Partial Monopoly Was Sanctioned by Regulations, http://finance.sina.com.cn/chanjing/sdbd/20150703/155522585707.shtml, visited on Jul.9, 2015.
[4] See Guidelines for the Promotion of Transformation, Upgrading and Service Quality Improvement of Automobile Repairing Industry (Ministry of Transport ［2014］ No.186) jointly issued Ministry of Transport, National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Environmental Protection, Ministry of Housing and Urban Construction, Ministry of Commerce, State Administration for Commerce and Industry, State Administration for Quality Supervision, China Insurance Regulatory Commission, etc.
[5] See Article 16, Article 18 and Article 22 in Administrative Measures for Implementing the Disclosure of Automobile Repair Technical Information (Draft).
[6] See He Fang, Wang Xin, Benz Was Fined 0.35 Billion for Price Monopoly—Anti-monopoly Law Enforcement Targeting After-sales Auto Parts, http://auto.qq.com/a/20150424/009766.htm, visited on Jun.16, 2015.
[7] See Qiu Rui, Chinese Enterprises Might Bear Anti-monopoly Pressure, Phoenix Weekly, 2014(26).
[8] Scholars generally believe that in the history of the development process of Anglo-American anti-monopoly law, the modern sense of antitrust law originated from the American “Sherman law”．Judging from the perspective of legislative events, the author also agreed．But in terms of the historical evolution of anti-monopoly law, the formation and development of the American anti-monopoly law cannot be separated from the legal experience related to restriction of trade and competition based on the common law, and hence the author used the term of Anglo-American anti-monopoly law to reveal the overall reflection of the history of the anti-monopoly law．Based on this historical image, concepts as general restriction and partial restriction trade contracts originated quite early．It can trace back to the common law of the United Kingdom that the nature of restriction contained in a transaction should be the focus of attention and the reasonable rules should be employed to distinguish boundaries between unreasonable restrictions and reasonable subsidiary restrictions and hence to distinguish between good and bad monopoly.
[9] Concerning the discussion on the consistency between the rights of consumers and interests of operators (See Chen Bing, Coordinate Development of Anti-monopoly Law Enforcement and Consumer Protection, Legal Science, 2013(9))．Particular attention should be paid to the discussion on the appropriateness of “right of competition”．Wang Hongxia and Li Guohai wrote to refute the notion of “right of competition”and believed that the establishment of right of competition and the introduction of competition law into “direct protection of operators' customers, sales volume and profits”will make the market economy become “all people vs．all people war”．“Absolutely implement this right and any competition will therefore be stifled.”But at the same time, they also expressed the opinion that the essence of competition is an effective way to achieve cooperation through conflicts．It is the tension of interests relationship between competitors that can help to attain the efficient allocation of the economic resources and hence market participants can benefit from the competitive mechanism and the welfare of the whole society can be increased (See Wang Hongxia, Li Guohai, Refuting “Competition Right”—Discussion on Protection of the Interests by the Competition Law, Law Review, 2012(4))．Here, the market participants include consumers, the whole social welfare system that contains consumer benefits．In view of this, whether one is for “competition right”or against it, s/he recognizes in the process of competition, there is consistency between realization of consumer interests and that of operator interests．Therefore, in the competition law enforcement process, realizing the equilibrium and unity of the two types of benefits is the basic concept and logic basis to optimize the competition law enforcement．This is an important point to note when it comes to the current competition law enforcement in the automotive industry.
[10] Monopolistic competition is a state and a selection of competition mechanism while dividing the market on the basis of discrepancy of competition and monopoly degree．It was a frequently discussed topic at the end of the twentieth Century in Chinese economic circles．Many scholars put forward the route of monopolistic competition that features China's market competition mode and selection of system and believe that the target model of China's competition system should be: monopoly under the state monitoring and control; monopolistic competition co-exists with free competition; market structure policies are equally important as competition policies; process of competition co-ordinates with process of social and economic development (See Chen Xiushan, China's Competition System and Selection of Competition Policy Target Mode, Chinese Social Sciences, 1995(3))．But some scholars directly pointed out that monopolistic competition is the market competition model for most of China's industries (See Liu Bingwen, Xiao Qingwen, The Initial Exploration of the Problem of Monopolistic Competition in Chinese Market, Journal of Southwestern Normal University, 1998(5))．In the assessment of economic governance and reform at the beginning of reforms and opening up, Research Institute of Chinese Economy of Fudan University directly put forward the point that the market mode of “monopolistic competition”in China's economic reform was different from the price liberalization reform and different from the enterprise reform or ownership reform as well．It can be called the third way of thinking which is suitable for the construction of socialistic market economy with Chinese characteristics and is the global development mode encompassing the past, present and future of China's economic reform, opening up, and the development．This way provides a target reference for the price reform and enterprise reform (See Research Institute of Chinese Economy, Fudan University (Chair: Wu Bailin, Wang Zhan), The Dynamic Analysis of National Economic Situation Under the Condition of Two Co-existent Markets—Revisiting the “Monopolistic Competition”Market Mode, Journal of Fudan University (Social Science Edition), 1990(1))．In view of this, at present, “monopolistic competition”mode and system has a far-reaching impact on China's future economic reform and development．The development of monopolistic competition industry can help to explain the focus of China's economic system reform at this stage, i.e．in face of further reform of monopolistic competition industry, “let the market play a decisive role in the allocation of resources, and let the government function better”．Monopolistic competition industries have played and are still playing a significant role in China's economic construction and development, but have also brought forth the corresponding control defects that have inhibited the substantial development of free market competition.
[11] See Chen Bing, On the Focus of China's Current Anti-monopoly Law Enforcement, with the Reference to American Experience, Social Science, 2013(10).
[12] Take the anti-monopoly department of National Development and Reform Commission for example, Price Supervision and Inspection and Anti-monopoly Bureau of NDRC has two subordinate sections: Price Monopoly Investigation Section I and Section II, with staff of 4 each, 8 in total．Each person must check a large number of cases, and hence there is a serious inadequacy of staff．Even this number of staff is formed after personnel augmentation．In July of 2011, National Development and Reform Commission won the approval of State Commission Office of Public Sectors Reform and Price Supervision and Inspection department was renamed as Price Supervision and Anti-monopoly Bureau．The number of staff was increased by 20, reaching 46 and four offices were added．Eight provinces and cities were approved to expand their respective anti price monopoly departments, a total of 150．Even in this situation, in face of investigation, affirmation and treatment of price monopoly cases nationwide, the existing central and local law enforcement officers are obviously insufficient and the law enforcement work was still difficult．See Anti-monopoly Investigation Staff: Listen to Beethoven Symphony to Boost Courage before Departure, http://news.xinhuanet.com/fortune/2015-06/21/c_lll5679958.html, visited on Jun.21, 2015.
[13] See Wu Hongwei, Tan Yuan, On China's Local Anti-monopoly Law Enforcement, Journal of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, 2012(4).