Antitrust laws are brief and vague which gives agencies a lot of discretion on how to enforce them. I just returned from a conference sponsored by Peking University where academics from Asia and the US warned Chinese officials against deterring pro-competitive practices by foreign firms; and ignoring anti-competitive practices by State Owned Enterprises (SOE's), who typically have dominant market positions.
Without the checks and balances of an independent judiciary, enforcement could discourage growth. Right now, foreign investors are indifferent between India's strong private property rights, but large regulatory burden; and China's weak property rights, but small regulatory burden. Poor enforcement of China's antitrust laws could change that.
Coincidentally, the Chinese Communist Party has just announced that it will not be developing the kinds of Democratic institutions that provide checks and balances on state power in the West. Without them, it is difficult to see how antitrust enforcement would avoid the regulatory miasma that can accompany poor enforcement. But China's oxymoronic "socialist market economy" has surprised us before. In the words of Deng Xiaoping, "I don't care if the cat is black or white as long as it can catch mice."
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