China promulgated the Anti-Monopoly Law (AML) in 2007 and it became effective in 2008. Although China had adopted other competition laws before the enactment of the AML, the AML was China's first modern antitrust law. The enforcement of the AML has attracted much attention from the business and legal communities since its promulgation. Cases such as the Ministry of Commerce's blockage of Coca-Cola's proposed acquisition of Huiyuan, as well as the National Development and Reform Commission's record-setting fine against Qualcomm, made headlines at home and abroad. At the same time, Chinese antitrust enforcement is often controversial and practitioners have bemoaned the procedural irregularities and lack of due process during enforcement. Above all, there has been much speculation that the enforcement of the AML is not solely based on economics but rather politics.

Wendy Ng's new book, an ambitious endeavour to map the political landscape of AML enforcement, is therefore extremely timely. The underlying theoretical framework she uses is constructed by analysing the supply and demand for the promulgation of the AML and its enforcement. Employing a socio-legal approach to understand the context of the law, Ng draws on a vast amount of literature in law and other fields. She has also conducted extensive interviews with lawyers, academics and law enforcers.

Antitrust practitioners and students of Chinese law will find Ng's study of the relevant stakeholders in the regulatory process very useful in understanding the political dynamics of the AML. Specifically, she identifies state-owned enterprises, industry regulators, private businesses and industry associations as actors that influence the demand for the AML, and relevant public enforcement agencies, courts, legal academics and practitioners as actors influencing the supply for the AML. She examines in depth the background and incentive structure of each of these relevant stakeholders. She also considers the broader policy environment – such as concerns about foreign companies, foreign investment and economic security – as a factor influencing the demand-side dynamics of the AML. In analysing the supply-side dynamics, she similarly explores institutional design issues, such as resource and knowledge constraints faced by competition authorities, coordination issues arising from the tripartite administrative enforcement structure, broader agency goals and responsibilities of the competition authorities, as well as the influence of the bureaucratic rank mechanism.

After setting the stage and introducing the relevant stakeholders, the author goes on to examine how these actors and institutional issues identified have influenced the drafting and promulgation of the AML, as well as its enforcement. To a great extent, she has succeeded in providing a comprehensive analysis of the various forces shaping the promulgation of the AML, although this topic has also been extensively researched in previous literature. Meanwhile, Ng's depiction of the various actors on the supply side, particularly the coordination and compromises between competition and industry regulators, is very valuable and insightful.

With regard to enforcement, Ng first describes the jurisdictional conflict between different enforcement agencies and considers the role of other government actors in the investigation and merger review process. She then shifts her analysis to how the AML has coordinated with other government policies, as well as the relevance of the relationship between the state and the market. For instance, she discusses China's innovation policy and then elaborates on the competition cases that involve intellectual property issues. However, it is not entirely clear how China's innovation policy has affected the particular cases, and specifically, what role the stakeholders previously introduced by her have played in the enforcement process and the channel through which such an influence is exerted. As practitioners of Chinese antitrust law are well aware, what you see on the surface can be deceptive. But to delve deeply into the matter is no easy task. As Chinese scholars also know well, it is not a walk in the park for outsiders to understand the Chinese system, but once you become an insider, you are often not at liberty to voice your objective opinions.

Another challenge for Ng in her study of the AML enforcement is that Chinese antitrust enforcement is highly fluid. In 2018, the Chinese government conducted a massive overhaul of the government structure. As a result, three former antitrust enforcement agencies were consolidated into a single agency which constituted a new ministry called State Administration and Market Regulation. The enforcement priorities and agenda of the new agency are yet to be determined, but some of the problems that have previously plagued Chinese antitrust enforcement, such as overlapping jurisdictions among the three former agencies, and the divergence of their policy objectives, are now moot. That said, fundamental institutional problems, such as the influence of the industrial policy of other government departments, probably persist.

This being her first academic book, Ng has done an exemplary job in demonstrating to the readers the importance of understanding the context in which the AML was drafted and enforced. I applaud her efforts in taking such a realistic approach to the study of Chinese antitrust law.