The ASEAN Main Countries Competition Legislation Comparative Study

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), an economic blocconsisting of Southeast Asian countries in the Asia-Pacific region, and theAsia-Pacific region have become the fastest development and most dynamic regions.From the "Asian four Dragon" to the Asian financial crisis in1997, it shows that theAsian countries are mutually dependent on the world economy. After havingexperienced a turbulent period, The ASEAN countries recognize that a more in-depthpromoting the integration process to strengthen them regional economic ties to reducethe orientation of self-reliance, and commitment to open markets are necessary, so thenew direction of development in ASEAN is regional integration and global tradeliberalization. ASEAN needs a unified and open market to replace the current separatenational markets, which requires consistency in the law for ASEAN, especially thecompetition law about investment on trade to promote the free flow of capital, goods,services and labor. ASEAN countries have reached an agreement that all ASEANcountries will develop and implement competition law in2015, however, it isnecessary to make an in-depth study on the competition law which have began inIndonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand in ASEAN, to find out the commonalitiesand differences, and sum up the law enforcement experience, which can be somereference to other ASEAN countries in the development of competition law.For China and ASEAN have recognized that regional trade arrangements has apositive role in promoting a constructive role of the accelerating regional and globaltrade liberalization in the multilateral trading system, both sides have signed morethan one cooperation agreements and built the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area(CAFTA) formally on January1,2010. China-ASEAN Free Trade Area and otherfree trade zone are the same in achieving the fundamental goal of trade liberalizationin the region, and introducing the competition policy to the China-ASEAN FreeTrade Area as an inevitable trend of development.This article has compared ASEAN countries with more mature in competitionlegislation. We can learn from it competition legislation and enforcement experiencebeneficial to the regional cooperation and it also supplies a template of competitionpolicy for other ASEAN countries and China-ASEAN "10+1" Free Trade Area. Thefirst chapter points out the need to be studied in this article and literature review,and cites the research methods. Chapter II does a general introduction of the competitionlaw of the ten ASEAN countries, pointing out that the causes of the competition lawgenerating, the relationship between the ASEAN industrial policy and competitionlegislation. Chapters III and IV are the focus of this article, do a comprehensiveanalysis on competition law for the major countries of ASEAN from the entity to theprogram, pointing out the similarities and differences, analyzing the political andsocial background to provide a reference sample for ASEAN other countries in thecompetition legislation in the future, thus achieving the unity of the competitionlegislation in the ASEAN region. The fifth chapter shows the competition legislationand law enforcement experience for establishing a unified China-ASEAN Free TradeArea of competition policy, and puts forward ideas on the integration of ASEANnational competition legislation.