China’s SAMR official recommended issuing detailed fair competition review measures for the safety field.
A senior official at China’s antitrust authority has proposed drafting competition-review rules tailored to safety regulation and strengthening enforcement coordination across administrative levels, warning that local administrative monopolies in safety-sensitive sectors often escape scrutiny because of institutional blind spots and expertise gaps.
In an article posted on the website of the State Administration for Market Regulation, or SAMR, earlier this week, Chen Mei from the Competition Policy and Liaison Bureau argued that fair-competition review mechanisms should be embedded into safety policymaking, especially where local authorities impose restrictive measures under the guise of risk control.
She recommended issuing detailed fair competition review measures for the safety field — covering sectors such as school food supply, bottled gas, hazardous chemicals and medical waste disposal — with detailed provisions on review targets, procedural requirements and evaluation criteria.
The measures aim to address common practices such as designating exclusive suppliers, applying restrictive approval conditions to block market entry, and forcing consolidation of market players — all frequently justified on safety grounds.
Chen also called for building vertical-horizontal coordination mechanisms to link county- and city-level regulators — who often detect issues but lack enforcement powers — with provincial and central antitrust authorities, as well as functional departments such as those responsible for safety oversight.
She noted that while city and county regulators are usually responsible for daily safety supervision and policy decisions, antitrust enforcement powers remain concentrated at the provincial and national levels — creating what she described as a regulatory mismatch.
“This mismatch means local regulators can see problems but can't act, and those who can act don’t see them,”
she wrote.
As one example of vertical coordination, she proposed requiring local regulators to report suspected exclusionary conduct to provincial authorities and SAMR, supported by oversight and feedback mechanisms to ensure accountability and traceability.
Chen also proposed strengthening accountability by revising administrative monopoly rules to explicitly target abuse of safety oversight, and introducing disciplinary referrals for officials or departments that fail to carry out fair-competition reviews or repeatedly engage in competition violations.
Implementation of the competition reviews, she added, should be incorporated into local safety regulators’ performance appraisals, with incentives and rewards for departments and individuals that perform well.
Chen’s article comes amid Beijing's broader push to eliminate barriers to market access. Article 39 of China's antitrust law explicitly prohibits administrative bodies from abusing their power to force businesses or individuals to use designated service providers.
Source: MLex
