CHINA Law and Practice Contributed by: Yi Xue, Zhong Lun
In contrast, for non-price vertical monopoly agree - ments, the threshold requirements are significantly relaxed. The safe harbour rule applies to such agree - ments where each participating undertaking maintains a relevant market share below 15%, with no turnover cap imposed as an additional qualifying condition. Furthermore, the Provisions also specify the eviden - tiary materials to be submitted by participating under - takings, the relevant review procedures, and the cor - responding legal liabilities. Recent Representative Cases To fully leverage the exemplary and guiding role of judicial adjudication in safeguarding and realising fair competition, the Supreme People’s Court of the Peo - ple’s Republic of China (SPC) recently released five antitrust model cases in September 2025. Some of the key cases are summarised here. The difficulty in overturning the antitrust administration penalty through administrative litigation Two landmark horizontal monopoly agreement cases, namely the Cement Industry Association Horizontal Monopoly Agreement Case ((2024) ZUI GAO FA ZHI XING ZHONG No 148) and the Camphor API Horizon - tal Monopoly Agreement Case ((2023) ZUI GAO FA ZHI XING ZHONG No 30), fully illustrate the high threshold for overturning antitrust administrative penalties via administrative litigation. In both cases, the SPC dis - missed the appellants’ claims for revocation, and fully upheld the administrative reconsideration decisions made by SAMR, as well as the original administrative penalty rulings issued by relevant market regulation authorities. In its judicial adjudication, the SPC confirmed that the administrative authorities had completed comprehen - sive fact-finding procedures, with sufficient, authentic and admissible evidence to substantiate the undertak - ings’ illegal acts of reaching and implementing hori - zontal monopoly agreements. It further held that the imposed administrative penalties were appropriately tailored to the specific nature, factual circumstances, social harm and detrimental market effects of the monopolistic conducts, strictly complying with the fundamental legal principle of proportionality and the
matching doctrine of offence and penalty in adminis - trative law. These two typical judgments demonstrate that litigants may hardly succeed in revoking or altering such pen - alty decisions in administrative litigation unless they can produce substantial and conclusive contradictory evidence to prove factual errors, procedural violations, improper application of law or obvious inappropriate discretion on the part of administrative authorities. Determination of illegal conduct and damages in follow-on litigation after antitrust administration penalty The “Concrete Companies Horizontal Monopo - ly Agreement” case ((2024) ZUI GAO FA ZHI MIN ZHONG No 456) is a typical follow-on civil litigation arising from a prior antitrust administration penalty. The SPC upheld the defendants’ horizontal monopo - listic conduct based on valid administrative penalty decisions, which carry binding evidentiary weight in civil proceedings. In this case, the SPC not only affirmed the defendant’s monopolistic conduct based on an effective adminis - trative penalty decision, but also clarified that coun - terparties that transacted with monopoly agreement participants during the implementation period may be reasonably presumed to have suffered losses caused by the monopolistic conduct. Where market prices for the relevant products were difficult to ascertain, the SPC calculated damages based on the actual trans - action prices by reference to economic theories and market practices. This ruling substantially reduces the plaintiff’s burden of proof and evidentiary difficulties and provides a useful adjudicative reference for similar cases. Invalidity determination of contractual clauses constituting monopoly agreements In the “Formaldehyde Sales Market” case ((2024) ZUI GAO FA ZHI MIN ZHONG No 350), the SPC ruled that upstream and downstream undertakings, by incor - porating non-compete clauses into their commercial arrangements, essentially reached and implemented a horizontal monopoly agreement for sales market divi - sion. Such arrangement unreasonably constrained the independent business operation of participating
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