Competition law and policy in China : the 2007 anti-monopoly law

China's emergence as a leading world economy is a matter of record. Its transformation from a planned command-and-control economy to a market-based system - to a "socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics" - has driven its remarkable economic development. Although there have been a number of significant developments in China's embrace of the market as the "fundamental mechanism to allocate resources instead of the previous system of administrative dictates" since the "open door" policies of Deng Xiaiping ended three decades of economic isolation and introduced economic reform, the enactment of the Anti-Monopoly Law (AML) by the National People's Congress on 30 August 2007 is undoubtedly "a landmark in China's legal and economic reform and development process". Laws protecting and promoting competition are the pillar of a market economy and have been embraced by most substantial economies as necessary prerequisites. If competition and market mechanisms are valued as the best strategy for delivering economic benefit then laws to protect and promote competition - variously called antitrust, competition or trade practices laws, or, in China, anti-monopoly laws - are necessary to protect and promote competition. With the introduction of the AML, China joins the 90 other countries that rely on a comprehensive regulatory regime for competition to seek to entrench the benefits of a market economy.