Study On The Application Of Punitive Compensation System In China’s Antimonopoly Law

Originating from the common law as an important system, the punitive compensation system has been developed for a long historical period and adopted as an important compensation system eventually in many continental law system countries. At present the punitive compensation system has been widely applied in the antimonopoly law in the world and has been proved to be a successful practice in the United States of America and Taiwan region. Unfortunately, the so-called punitive compensation system in is not regulated in our country’s Anti-monopoly Law (effective in August1,2008). Furthermore, due to the problems relating to enforcement authorities and their duties of the law, the effectiveness and its legislative goal of China’s Antimonopoly Law has been widely questioned, which wherein has raised the discussion of the introduction of the so-called punitive compensation system into China’s antimonopoly law among Chinese academic group.Based on the necessary definition of the punitive compensation system, the paper starts its academic investigation from feasibility and necessity of the introduction of the punitive compensation system into our antimonopoly law. According to article50of our antimonopoly law, the victim suffering monopoly illegal infringement can only claim to the monopoly operator. Unfortunately, due to the disadvantaged post of the victims, it is actually a too difficult task for the victims to collect and provide valid proofs or evidence, which therein apparently fails to advance prior deterrence effect to the monopoly operators for their powerful economic position and thus can not effectively curb monopoly illegal acts. Blankly to say, the target value of the application of the punitive compensation system is highly consistent to the social standard value of economic law, since the punitive compensation can effectively curb the illegal monopoly behavior for its prior deterrence effect. Therefore, the optimism to the introduction of the so-called system into our antimonopoly law is acceptable. Moreover, even if the introduction may raise the worry of excessive deterrence, the worry can be effectively relieved through specific constraints on the application system. The main part of the paper consequently focus its attention to do a comparative analysis between the practice in the Anglo-American law system and the continental law system and to make a careful investigation on the systematical design of the application of punitive compensation in our antimonopoly law, centering around the qualification of the subject of lawsuit, the amount of compensation.The paper is divided into four parts. The first part is an initial part attempting to lay a theoretical foundation for the second part and focusing on analyzing the definition, scope of application, compositional elements and the function of the punitive compensation system. The second part, with the peculiar interests on deficiencies of the compensation system in China’s antimonopoly law, the theoretical proof for the application of the punitive compensation system in China’s antimonopoly law and the advantages and disadvantages of that, is an argumentation on the necessity and feasibility of the application of punitive compensation system in our antimonopoly law. An affirmative conclusion in terms of such application is drawn in this part. The third part is attempting to offer a discussion on the major issues of the punitive compensation system that includes the qualification of the subject of lawsuit, the compositional elements of the punitive compensation and some other key problems in terms of the application of the so-called system. The fourth part is offering a conclusion to the paper that summarizes the main argumentations of the paper and tries to outline the specific application of the punitive compensation system in China’s antimonopoly law.