Antitrust Issues Research In The Field Of Civil Aviation Of China

The industrial characteristics and market structure in the civil aviation transport market are special. However, the monopoly in civil aviation industry is quite similar to that in other industries. Due to its importance and particularity, the civil aviation industry has always been involved in the reform of market economy in China. The main relevant reforms are as follows. In1987, airports were separated from airlines. On11th October2002, civil aviation enterprises were reorganized into six group companies in accordance with Civil Aviation System Reform Program made by the State Council. From these reforms, we can see that China’s aviation industry has been exploring ways to separate the functions between the government and the enterprise, make civil aviation enterprises assume sole responsibility for their own management decisions, profits and losses, and create an environment for equal competition. However, in practice, the China’s civil aviation enterprise groups still have a monopoly in the market under the protection of traditional Natural Monopoly Theory and the administrative monopoly is very powerful due to the government over-regulation. Moreover, these enterprise groups own competitive advantages. Thus, the real equal competition environment has not been established.This thesis firstly gives an introduction of the development, the industrial attributes and the market structure of China’s civil aviation industry, which paves the way for the discussion of the whole thesis. In addition, this part analyzes the civil aviation market from the perspective of economics and summarizes the characteristics of Oligopoly structure in China’s civil aviation market.Secondly, this thesis reviews the theories on protecting the monopoly status of civil aviation enterprises in the market and the current management regime through the deep analysis on the nature of the monopoly in China’s civil aviation industry and the specific performance of the monopolistic behaviors. Then, the comparison between the anti-trust legal systems in China and those in foreign countries are made. The anti-trust legal systems in the U.S. and European Union are mainly discussed. After the comparative study on the anti-trust legal systems, the problems in the legal regulation on civil aviation in China are identified and the useful overseas experiences are summarized.The last part of this thesis reanalyzes the crucial reason for the monopoly in China’s civil aviation industry, namely the administrative monopoly. Also, the specific measures and advice on the market-oriented reforms of China’s civil aviation are offered in this part.