When competition law meets telecom regulation: the Chinese context

The liberalized telecom sector propagates a dynamic ecosystem mixed prominently with three forces: the market mechanism, sector-specific regulation and competition rules. While the tension between the market force and sector-specific regulation has been well studied, the conflicts between sector-specific regulation and competition rules have attracted less attention in particular in China. The 2012 China Telecom/China Unicom case indicates that such conflicts are not moot issues any more. This leads to a question whether it is better to let the two instruments compete or complement. The comparative study on the different practices of the EU and the US suggests that China may better apply the US case-by-case approach, i.e. to evaluate whether antitrust intervention can bring added value to effective competition. Subsequently, a substantive analysis based on the US approach arrives at a conclusion that the EU outcome is nonetheless better suited for the Chinese context, namely to establish the supremacy of competition rules over sector-specific regulation and to allow the former to intervene in the latter whenever necessary.