CHINA Trends and Developments Contributed by: Yi Xue, Zhong Lun
The remedial flexibility of this route can be seen in a disclosed Wuhan pharmaceutical matter. The procu - ratorate brought a civil public-interest action against a pharmaceutical company for abuse of dominance. The company was required to stop the conduct and provide CNY2 million in cash and CNY5 million worth of medicines to compensate harm to the public inter - est. The combination of cessation, money and in-kind relief is not a conventional private damages award. It suggests that public-interest cases may be used to design remedies around affected patients or com - munities. For defendants, this also creates a sepa - rate exposure that may coexist with administrative enforcement and private follow-on claims. Epilogue In 2025, China’s antitrust litigation regime saw sub - stantive progress in both legislative upgrade and judi - cial practice. On the legislative front, SAMR released the amended Provisions on Prohibition of Monopoly Agreements, which officially operationalised the ver - tical monopoly agreement safe harbor rule with dif - ferentiated tiered thresholds, filling the long-standing regulatory gap since the 2022 Anti-Monopoly Law revision and offering clear compliance benchmarks for market entities.
In judicial practice, the Supreme People’s Court pub - lished a batch of landmark precedents in 2025, cover - ing loss calculation for follow-on horizontal monopoly civil claims, judicial review of administrative penal - ties, and the first-ever ruling affirming administrative monopoly conduct. These cases unified nationwide adjudication standards and effectively eased the evi - dentiary burden for private antitrust plaintiffs. Looking ahead, private antitrust civil claims will main - tain steady growth as clarified judicial rules lower litigation barriers. High-dispute sectors will remain centered on the digital economy, pharmaceuticals industry, building materials and public utilities. Procu - ratorial public interest litigation will expand further with strengthened cross-agency collaboration, and China will gradually refine a multi-layered antitrust govern - ance system integrating administrative enforcement, private civil remedies and procuratorial supervision.
80 A NTITRUST LI T IGATI O N 2026
CHAMBERS.COM
Powered by FlippingBook