In China, Behave or Face a Campaign
Staffing and new laws aren’t yet up to speed with the country’s business growth. To cope, antitrust regulators turn to time-honored Communist party strategies for keeping things in line.
Regulated by pressure
Photographer: ANTHONY WALLACE/AFPWith the debacle of Ant Group Co.’s initial public offering, we’ve witnessed a flurry of legislative and enforcement activities aimed at tightening antitrust regulation within the Chinese tech sector. This massive campaign, however, is hardly a new phenomenon in Chinese law. The roots of campaign-style law enforcement can be traced back to the revolutionary period of the Chinese Communist Party, which often needed to rely on mass movements in the absence of state institutions.
Contemporary law enforcement campaigns mobilize China’s vast bureaucratic machine to impose swifter and stricter penalties on legal violations; they also use sophisticated media and propaganda strategies to achieve their policy objectives. These drives focus on a wide range of legal areas, such as corruption, organized crime, piracy, counterfeiting, pollution, food safety, forced labor and securities regulation.