Whither Antitrust Regulation of Loyalty Rebates in China: The Tetra Pak Decision and Lessons from the EU

On 16 November 2016, China issued the trailblazing Tetra Pak decision, which introduced the concept of loyalty rebates into the Chinese Anti-Monopoly Law. This article is aimed at critically assessing the loyalty rebates analysis in this decision and discussing how the law could develop thereon. It argues that, while breaking the ground for an effects-based approach to loyalty rebates in China, this decision failed to establish a solid theory of harm. This destined that the decision-maker would not be able to engage in a contextualized effects-analysis it had envisaged. By comparing this problem to a similar one in EU competition law, this article suggests that the exclusive dealing analogy should be employed for loyalty rebates analysis.