Foreign companies in some industrial sectors in China have occupied more and more market shares in this country. Can it be said that these industrial sectors are already under the control of foreign companies£¿In response to this question, Wang Zhile, director of the Multinational Company Research Center under the Ministry of Commerce recently said that taking more market shares did not mean that foreign companies had become monopolies in these sectors. In fact, foreign companies will not become industrial monopolies in China, he said.

He explained by saying that firstly, we should not regard all foreign enterprises in a certain industrial sector as a whole rival group to Chinese enterprises, for competition exists even among foreign enterprises. Secondly, the large market share can only mean that foreign enterprises have dominated the related market alone, which is only one of the preconditions for the formation of a monopoly.

The most important factor to judge the existence of a monopoly is to see whether large enterprises have limited competition by taking advantage of their large market shares. At present, some foreign enterprises in China do control a large market share in some industrial sectors; however, no foreign enterprises have so far used their advantageous postion to limit competition, he said.

He stressed that currently, no Chinese industrial sectors have ever been controlled by any large foreign enterprise. In the short term, it can be said that no foreign enterprises can become a monopoly in any Chinese industrial sector.

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