On The Illegality Of Restricting Resale Price In China

Resale price maintenance belongs to vertical price restrain. Traditionally, anti-monopoly law focused on the negative effects of maintenance of resale price such as the facilitation of dealer cartel or manufacturer cartel which have an bad effect on competition.However, along with the development of economic theory, we find that this behavior has the double influence both positive and negative. 2007,the Supreme Court of the United States overruled this rule by its judgement in Leegin case and began to apply rule of reason, which is a reference for us. And the relevant domestic cases are helpful to deep analyze this behavior.This paper starts for the theory of resale price maintenance, analyzing concepts and the impact on market competition. Secondly, by analyzing the experience of the US and EU we can have a brief glimpse on consensus on these countries.At the same time, through Chinese actual cases we can study the practices of anti-monopoly law enforcement. Then, based on the anti-monopoly normative analysis, we can summarize problems of our judicial and law enforcement in the process. Finally, I make recommendations on this issue.The main innovations of this paper are: firstly, a clear concept have issued that resale price maintenance are between two parties. resale price maintenance is a dynamic process, in which, the upstream and downstream enterprises compete on strength. Upstream companies restrain the price when selling goods to downstream distributors relying on their products advantage, and also this strain on price happens on downstream business because of their advantages of information and marketing channels.Secondly, this paper make a classification when talking about the influence of this behavior, not only looking into the impact of both positive and negative aspects, but also analyzing from three points including suppliers or distributors, consumers, and market. Under the background that we tend to apply rule of reason on this behavior, it’s more and more important to specify the competition influence.Thirdly, through specific cases, we can summarize practices in the process of our judicial and administrative enforcement and propose prominent problem on anti-monopoly’s norms and actual operation. To solve these problems, I put forward three suggestions: Firstly, we should explain exactly of the anti-monopoly law; secondly executive enforcement should be gradually unified and optimize the information disclosure; and finally,I propose a analysis framework of resale price maintenance based on rule of reason.