FAS Delegation had a working meeting with China Ministry of Commerce

On 10 April 2017, during a working meeting to Beijing (China) FAS delegation had a meeting with representatives of China Ministry of Commerce, where the parties discussed the current and prospective areas of cooperation between the two bodies

Opening the meeting, Assistant Minister of Commerce (Deputy Minister) Li Chenggang stated that productive cooperation between the two bodies is deeply rooted and gives an excellent example of efficient cooperation between competition authorities. He pointed out that the Antimonopoly Bureau of China Ministry of Commerce is facing some cross-border issues, particularly, considering economic concentration transactions, when large transnational corporations are involved. Therefore, there is a practical need to intensify cooperation between competition authorities of different countries, not only under the frame of competition advocacy but also under the frame of law enforcement actions in the course of investigating particular cases.

Head of FAS delegation, Deputy Head of FAS Andrey Tsyganov congratulated Chinese colleagues with the start of their BRICS chairmanship. He pointed out that the bodies have achieved significant success in developing cooperation since singing the Memorandum of Understanding in 2014. Both competition authorities are facing similar problems, particularly, concerning operations of large corporations. He supported the Chinese colleagues on the importance of expanding cooperation between the antimonopoly bodies of Russia and China across all issues of the global agenda.

Andrey Tsyganov described FAS initiatives that, implemented under the BRICS format, would be the key to enhance performance efficiency of BRICS competition systems. In particular, the parties discussed possibility of establishing BRICS Competition Centre and drafting an International Toolkit on international cooperation between competition authorities to counter restrictive business practices of large cross-national corporations. China was interested in these initiatives and assured that they will be studied in detail and the parties shall return to discussing them in the near future.

Finally the parties discussed the time frame for bilateral meetings at international events organized by FAS and China Ministry of Commerce, particularly, St Petersburg International Legal Forum (May 2017, St Petersburg, the Russian Federation), Competition Week in Russia (September 2017, Veliky Novgorod, the Russian Federation), China Competition Forum (October 2017, Beijing, the people’s Republic of China). All participants also emphasized that BRICS Competition Conference in Brasilia (Brazil) in November 2017 will be the most important platform for discussing further stages of expanding cooperation between the competition authorities.