Foreign Corrupt Practices Act And Its Revelations On China Anti-Commercial Bribery Legal System

With the development of marketization and ever-fiercer competition, the act of commercial bribery has become a serious problem in current economic life. With the violation of the basic principles of socialist market economy, the act of commercial bribery has caused a lot of negative effects on the investment environment. It encumbers fair competition and rational distribution of resources, disrupts economic order, infringes people's lawful rights and interests and corrupts a lot of officials and employees as well.With the globalization and increase of foreign direct investment in China from developed countries, more and more multinational companies have extended their influence into China in the form of joint venture, merger and acquisition and establishing wholly owned enterprises. And conducting the act of commercial bribery has become an important method used by multinational companies to obtain more benefits. With stronger financial power, the multinational companies will hence do much greater damage to the political, economic and social interests of China. Accordingly, Chinese government is sparing no efforts to fight against the commercial bribery acts involving multinational companies that do business in China.From legal perspective, there are still a lot of deficiencies in the current Chinese anti-commercial bribery legal system. For example, there is no explicit definition on commercial bribery in PRC Criminal Law, and the level of some regulations stipulating commercial bribery are not high enough. These are the reasons why the current Chinese anti-commercial bribery legal system is still not powerful enough to fight against the commercial bribery acts of multinationals and also why we need to refer to and learn from Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.The first section of this paper makes a general description of the current status of the American multinationals that are involved in the commercial bribery in China. With the introduction and analysis of some typical cases, the close study on the definition of commercial bribery is made. The second section focuses on the analysis and commentary on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which targets at the acts of giving briberies to the foreign officials by US domestic concerns, issuers and some foreign people. Because the jurisdiction of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is beyond the territory of America to some extent, some unique legal issues are therefore raised and analyzed.The third section continues to give a systematic analysis and commentary on the anti-commercial bribery legal system of China, where more and more American multinationals select to do business and are involved in the act of commercial bribery. With reference to Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, some suggestions and ideas on how to improve the Chinese anti-commercial bribery legal system have been presented.