Competition Issue In Open Economy

Competition law and policy are pivotal tools on establishing healthy and efficiency economic order for every markets oriented country. But the economic globalization is also globalizing the implementation of these tools. So far, the intense international cooperation in this sphere has been eagerly calling for a multilateral framework. How to establish a multilateral framework on competition has also became an important topic of the WTO. In this article, the author gives a definition to the term 'competition issue' and recognizes that this term should be divided into a 'broad sense' and a 'narrow sense'. Then the article discusses the relations and differences among the terms 'anti-monopoly law', 'anti-trust law' and 'competition law'; and the inter-relationship between 'competition law' and 'competition policy'. Then, under the hypothesis of closed economy and non-transition economy, this article analyses the role of competition in a market economy. The author argues that protecting competition should be a fundamental gospel to competition law and policy. Then, the article goes on discussing different attitudes toward the 'competition issue' between developing countries and developed countries and the troubles that differentia has caused in settling 'competition issue'. Basing on this theoretical underpinning, the article gives a concrete introduction of the multilateral framework proposed by the WTO, which followed by careful anatomy and evaluation. After this, the author points out certain defects of this multilateral framework. In the last chapter of this paper, the author brings forward several suggestions on how to ameliorate the WTO framework and how to resolve 'competition issue' in a global context.