IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jcomle/v8y2012i4p805-830..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Single-Entity Theory: An Antitrust Time Bomb For Chinese State-Owned Enterprises?

Author

Listed:
  • Angela Huyue Zhang

Abstract

In five recent cases involving the acquisition of European companies by Chinese state-owned enterprises, the European Commission has delved deeply into the relationship between Chinese state-owned enterprises and the wider Chinese State. A common issue arose in these cases: did the notifying state-owned enterprise operate independently of the Chinese State, or was there scope for the Chinese State to coordinate the behavior of the notifying enterprise and other state-owned enterprises in the same sector? In the latter case, all the state-owned enterprises in the same sector would be treated as part of a single entity for the purpose of merger analysis. To provide an in-depth analysis of this issue, this article first reviews the historical development of the reform of state-owned enterprises and examines their current corporate governance structure. By applying the economic theory of the firm to understand the concept of “undertaking” under the EU Merger Regulation, this article reveals the flaws in the European Commission's analysis of this issue. As the single-entity theory can be used as both a shield and a sword, the European Commission's decision on this issue will have far reaching implications for future antitrust cases involving Chinese state-owned enterprises.

Suggested Citation

  • Angela Huyue Zhang, 2012. "The Single-Entity Theory: An Antitrust Time Bomb For Chinese State-Owned Enterprises?," Journal of Competition Law and Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 8(4), pages 805-830.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jcomle:v:8:y:2012:i:4:p:805-830.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/joclec/nhs026
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bickenbach, Frank & Liu, Wan-Hsin & Li, Guoxue, 2015. "The EU-China bilateral investment agreement in negotiation: Motivation, conflicts and perspectives," Kiel Policy Brief 95, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    2. Haiyan Zhang & Daniel Bulcke, 2014. "China’s direct investment in the European Union: a new regulatory challenge?," Asia Europe Journal, Springer, vol. 12(1), pages 159-177, March.
    3. Liu, John Zhuang & Zhang, Angela Huyue, 2019. "Ownership and political control: Evidence from charter amendments," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • K21 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - Antitrust Law
    • L22 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Organization and Market Structure
    • L10 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - General
    • L40 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - General
    • N45 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - Asia including Middle East

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:jcomle:v:8:y:2012:i:4:p:805-830.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/jcle .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.