Key Changes To China's Merger Control Regime In The New Era

After 14 years of enforcement of China's Anti-Monopoly Law (the "AML") since 2008, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress of China has amended the AML after a two-year review with several rounds of deliberations and issued a new version ("the New AML") on June 24, 2022. In addition to updating the rules regulating monopoly agreements and abuse of dominance, noteworthily, the New AML brings substantial changes to the merger control rules and procedures, such as introducing the "stop-the-clock" mechanism, establishing the categorized and classified merger control system and others.

Shortly after the promulgation of the New AML, a package of regulations sprang up, like bamboo shoots. On June 27, 2022, SAMR subsequently published several draft amendments of the implementation regulations for public comments, the draft implementation rules regarding notification threshold ("Threshold Rules") and review of concentration of undertaking ("Review Rules") are