The Regulation Of Price Alliance In Industry Based Onantimonopoly Law

Free competition is the soul of market economy. Following the competition rule of“survival of the fittest”, the undertakings do a variety of business activities freely in themarket. According to the aim of seeking profits, the undertakings take all kinds ofcompetitive means to maximize theirs interests, so that to strive for a favorable marketposition. Among a lot of competition strategies, the price strategy is the one which theundertakings often chose to use.Since reforming and opening up, our economic structure that is based on theplanned economy has changed gradually. And the market mechanism becomes to play afundamental and primary role in the social economic life. As the strong flexibility ofmarket and the deepening integration of global economy, the market supply and demandpattern presents a characteristic of complicated changes. Where is in the competitionfield, these changes makes a single strategy of “price war” by reducing the pricebecome hard to meet the demands of undertakings. Weighing the interests of resourcesthat are hold in hands, the undertakings try to forge a strategic alliance that is exited inthe range of the same industry. By reaching a pricing agreement, they hope to get ajoining force, reduce the adverse factors of price competition in the market, andminimize the influence of price fluctuation of its own, so that they can get rid of theenormous pressure brought by the competition, obtaining better benefits. However,these changes of strategies from competition to cooperation are dangerous, because theprice convergence based on the agreement between the enterprises makes them transfertheir risk of dynamic benefits loss to the consumers and other business undertakings. Ifthings go in like this, within a period of time, it makes the price go to a monopoly statusin the field of price convergence. Then the enterprises can strengthen the controlabilities of market price of themselves.Among the different ways of monopolies, price monopoly harms the market in themost direct way, and its negative consequences are the most serious. Within some field,the visual display of monopoly status is shown on the price fixed or price increase ofgoods or services. Such a change makes the price lose its indicative function in theaspects of allocating resources. In such a situation, the undertakings couldn’t know themovement direction of resources from the price fluctuation in one industry, and the consumers could not get a large amount of information by analyzing the pricefluctuation, including the quality information. No doubted, the undertakings andconsumers acting reflections for the market become slowing, which affect the healthystatus of the market.The price alliance is essentially a kind of monopoly which can sustain consistencyin price fluctuations. In the related theories in abroad, price alliance is considered as amanifestation of cartel. It is formed between two or more undertakings. In order torealize their fundamental goal of achieve excess profits, undertakings go together bycontracts or other ways, which explicit expressions are the price fixed or pricesynchronized fluctuation. So for the adverse consequences, the price alliance is acoalition which can restrict market competition. In reality, price alliance does a hugeharm to the normal market order and it is taken for granted that should be cracked downby Chinese Antimonopoly Law as one of its key targets. However, because theregulation system of price monopoly in our antimonopoly legislation is sketchy and thespecific manifestation of them in practice is objectively complicated, the binding forceof law for the harmful behaviors is not strong. How to identify and regulate theseactions of destroying competition becomes the problem that we should solve in reality.This article is intended to analyze the contents of price alliance such as itsformation background, conditions, and damages, to explore the unlawfulnessrequirements of price alliance which appears between competitors in the same industry.Then people can recognize the positive function of antimonopoly law in relatedproblems’ regulation, and so to find the suitable solutions of price alliance regulation inour country.