Of Monopoly Agreements Exempt General Conditions

Since competition is not always good for economy developing, and monopoly is not always bad, nowadays, the antitrust law acts as a government's tool to keep a balance between competition and monopoly.'Cartel Agreements' as one of essential and foundation issues in the antitrust law, they would follow the character of the antitrust law. Thus,'cartel agreements' have two opposite sides:one would lead to an efficiency situation and harm to social welfare; while, the other would be totally opposite. Owing to above, the traditional viewpoint in the antitrust law: 'big is bad' is absolutely wrong. The historic way that we treated' cartel agreements' following the Rule of Per Se, and ignored their effectiveness, had some impassable shortcomings. In recent decades, trying to keep an effective competition between undertakings and improve consumers (even social) welfare in the modern market has become more and more rational. Under such a situation, the Rule of Reason seems much better when we judge whether 'cartel agreements' is against the antitrust law or not. But what is the Rule of Reason? How to use this rule in the exempting cartel agreements between undertakings? The second question now is facing a difficult position in the PRC's Antitrust Law:The PRC's Antitrust Law solely provides a principle rule (the exempting agreements between undertakings must obey fair share of consumers and no elimination of competition), but gives any further explanations. So now the regulation of the exempting cartel agreements between undertakings lacks of operational capacity and experiences. After doing some research on the exempting agreements between undertakings of the EC competition law, it is easy to discover that the EC competition law and the PRC's antitrust law have same roots and goals. Due to all above situations, this dissertation will use the experience of the EC competition law for reference to examine some specific conditions of the exempting cartel agreements between undertakings.