The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), an antitrust watchdog in China, is set to implement new detailed guidelines aimed at curbing monopolistic behavior in the auto sector, the Global Times reported.
Citing a source who participated in the drafting of the guidelines, the National Business Daily reported that the draft of the guidelines has already been filed with the State Council, but the timetable for its release is still unknown.
The report said that the guidelines will provide sales and after-sales services with directions and define price-fixing as one of the core aspects of the guidelines.
According to the report, the auto industry has been one of the NDRC's main targets in its efforts to crack down on monopolistic practices during the past few years. The NDRC has penalized and fined a number of automakers and dealers, including Audi, Chrysler, and at least 12 Japanese auto parts makers since Aug. 2014, the report added.
The NDRC also fined German automaker Mercedes-Benz in April with a record fine of 350 million yuan ($56.45 million), as well as its dealers in Jiangsu Province for price-fixing.
Wei Shilin, a senior partner at Dacheng Law Offices in Beijing, told the Global Times that antitrust law enforcement will become more transparent in the future, as he believed that the new guidelines will draw lessons from previous antitrust cases.
The new guideline is based on China's antitrust law, which came into effect in Aug. 2008. Although the country's antitrust law is currently the main reference for defining monopolistic behavior that guides antitrust investigations, experts believed that the law does not give details and clear guidance for automakers and law enforcement bodies.
"In some cases it is hard to tell whether certain forms of behavior can be considered monopolistic, as the antitrust law only gives very general instructions," Jia Xinguang, a senior expert at the China Automobile Dealers Association, told the Global Times Thursday, noting that automakers and dealers need more detailed guidance.
Jia said that NDRC should take a look at the antitrust laws of Japan and Europe to get an idea of detailed regulations.
Experts believed that more antitrust probes will be conducted more frequently in the future, especially in the auto sector, and local automakers will also be subject of the probes, the report said.