China car probes mark anti-monopoly war

The latest such move was made by Chrysler's China unit, which on Tuesday announced a 20 percent-price cut for 145 spare parts, a 65,000-yuan ($10,655) reduction for its Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT8 model and a 45,000-yuan cut for its 5.7L Grand Cherokee.

The company claimed the price cuts were made to reward Chinese consumers for their loyalty and to respond "positively" to the NDRC's anti-monopoly probes.

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On Sunday, Mercedes-Benz announced that it will slash prices for some spare parts by up to 29 percent from Sept 1. The reductions will involve over 10,000 parts, with a 15-percent price cut on average.

At the end of July, Jaguar Land Rover and Audi also reduced prices for cars or parts. They both said that the price cuts were made in response to the the NDRC's anti-monopoly probes.

Analysts believe that anti-monopoly probes will become regular practices.

Anti-monopoly lawyer Hao Junbo said the Anti-Monopoly Law has been "dormant" since it came into force, but it will be better practiced in the future.

Liu Chunyan, an associate professor of law with Tongji University, believes this is just a beginning and the probes may extend to other sectors as it has taken some time for supervisors to get up to speed with how to enforce the anti-monopoly laws.

Besides the car sector, anti-monopoly investigations have extended to the IT and telecom sectors, with US software giant Microsoft and US chip maker Qualcomm implicated last week.

Wei Shilin, a lawyer with Dacheng Law Offices, said that it is a good result for the involved enterprises to cut prices, but the ultimate goal is to streamline market management and build a fair market environment.

China's anti-monopoly legal system contains an Anti-Monopoly Law, Regulations on Anti-Price Monopoly and Procedural Regulations on Administrative Enforcement of Anti-Price Monopoly.