The Winter Olympics kick off this week. On Friday evening, the participating nations will march into the Bird’s Nest in Beijing’s north. However, just days before the opening ceremony, more and more new Covid cases are popping up, even in the highly sealed-off Olympic bubble. Officials expect another surge by the end of the week.
Meanwhile, we take a look at the medal hopes of the People’s Republic. China’s athletes have been winning medals in short track and ski freestyle for years. And the odds are once again in their favor in these disciplines, our author Christiane Kuehl analyzes. In cross-country skiing, on the ice track or on the ski ramp, on the other hand, things look less promising for China.
The EU Commission is hoping for success in a different way. With its new standardization strategy, it wants to give Europe an edge over China. The paper is to be presented this week. The direction of the proposals is already clear, writes Till Hoppe: Norms and standards are to be defined more European, more strategically and at the same time more quickly in the future – and also copy some aspects from Beijing in the process.
In today’s interview, Swiss lawyer Adrian Emch explains the trials and tribulations of Chinese antitrust law. Emch is one of the leading experts in China on European and Chinese regulatory law. He is certain: “Antitrust law is one of the most important instruments currently at the disposal of authorities.” The harsh regulatory wave against tech companies hardly surprised him.
Have a pleasant week!
A few years ago, Chinese athletes suddenly appeared in Norway. Until then, they had trained in other disciplines ranging from trampoline, long-distance running, or kayaking. But now they were learning completely new things: ski jumping, cross-country skiing, or biathlon in the snow. A 2018 video showed giggling teens descending from a children’s ski jump for the first time in their lives, skis crossed and followed by a crash landing on green mats. There are cheers for the first jumper to stick the landing, ex-trampolinist Zhai Yujia.
In 2019, the original group shrank from 22 candidates to 10. “The selection process was maybe more brutal than they expected,” coach Kjetil Strandbraaten said at the time. One of the selection criteria: The group’s first test jumps in the snow. Zhai Yujia was allowed to remain. “I feel much more stable in all aspects and feel good jumping now,” she said afterward. She tells her mother in the video call, “Sitting on top was scarier, but once I jumped I was just fine.” Ex-sprinter Sun Jing was also allowed to stay on the team – even though she broke her arm in a fall in 2018 and had to take a longer break. That’s because the coaches were visibly impressed in the video by Sun’s determination. However, for now, their Olympic dreams have yet to be fulfilled. They are not among the two women and one man who are now competing for China in ski jumping.
China needs to replicate its hard efforts in ski jumping in other disciplines as well. The country lacks the expertise to build internationally competitive teams in many disciplines. To this end, China hired a plethora of veteran foreign coaches to train and work with athletes in China. And it has sent hundreds of young people overseas since 2017 to learn cross-country skiing, biathlon, or, indeed, ski jumping at elite facilities with world-class coaches. Most of them came from completely different sports and stood on skis for the first time at the beginning of the program. China has signed such agreements with 15 winter sports countries to train Chinese athletes at their national training centers, including Finland and Austria.
In Pyeongchang, China won only nine medals in 2018 and was ranked 16th in the nation standings at the end. The only gold was achieved by Wu Dajing in 500 meters short track, the fast-paced race against each other on a short ice track without tracks. China has won 10 of its 13 gold medals in the history of the Winter Olympics in this discipline. Olympic champion Wu Dajing will compete again in 2022, as one of ten on the team. He is one of China’s few medal candidates.
In short track, the prospects for the precious metal are generally the best: China’s skaters have won medals at every Winter Olympics since 2002, and even four in Vancouver 2010. Ice is typically good terrain for China’s athletes. In speed skating, there has always been a medal since 2006, not the least thanks to cooperation with coaches from the speed skating superpower Netherlands. Guo Dan (women’s mass start) or Ning Zhongyan (men’s 1,500 meters) are candidates for a medal. In figure skating, the Chinese so far did not land a podium in this millennium in 2014. In 2018, two-time world champion pair Sui Wenjing and Han Cong lost in pairs skating by a razor-thin margin to Germany’s gold medalists Aljona Savchenko and Bruno Massot. Sui and Han now want to finally win gold this time. There is also an outside chance for China’s curling ladies.
China also expects success in ski freestyle, where it won three medals in 2018. Freestyle encompasses several action sports on skis: moguls, ski cross, slopestyle, halfpipe, or aerials. While skicross is a competitive race on a single slope, the other disciplines award points for difficulty, perfection, or distance of partly highly acrobatic jumps. In the spectacular aerials (ski acrobatics), athletes jump over a snow jump and perform flips, spins and straddles. China took all 2018 freestyle medals in aerials. This year, Xu Mengtao and Kong Fanyu are considered medal contenders in the women’s event, and Sun Jiaxu and Jia Zongyang in the men’s event. Jia had taken silver in 2018.
But in 2022, China also has promising chances in the ski halfpipe – not to be confused with the snowboard halfpipe, which is also an Olympic event. American-born Eileen Gu is the benchmark here. The 18-year-old is now competing for China, as she announced a while back. At the X Games action sports festival in the US ski resort of Aspen at the beginning of January, Gu claimed three titles. Apart from the halfpipe, she also won the aerials and slopestyle. In this event, athletes use special skis to hurl themselves down a slope full of obstacles that resemble an urban skate park. Gu will compete in all three disciplines in Beijing. Medals are firmly in the cards.
But this is where the medal hopes end. So far, China has hardly played a role on the international ice track, the ski jump or the cross-country track. At least the many years of hard work with foreign coaching teams led to some surprise victories in 2021 in disciplines in which China had never stood out before. This was the case, for example, at the Skeleton World Cup in Innsbruck, where Geng Wenqiang unexpectedly took first place together with two other starters at the beginning of the season. The Chinese women’s double bobsleigh recently landed in a surprising sixth position in the World Cup. And biathlete Cheng Fangming finished twelfth in the sprint at the recent World Cup weekend in Oberhof, thanks mainly to solid shooting scores. They will all compete in Beijing.
Some of their coaches were once legends of their sport themselves. China’s biathletes, for example, are coached by former biathlon stars Ole Einar Bjoerndalen and Darja Domratcheva. Germany’s record Olympic bobsleigh champion, André Lange, coaches China’s bobsleigh team. But the job is still difficult: Bobsleigh, skeleton and, above all, luge are technically extremely demanding sports in which accidents occur time and again. In biathlon, the athletes still lack speed on the track. There also aren’t any Chinese cross-country skiing stars.
In ice hockey, in the meantime, China narrowly avoided embarrassment. The host traditionally always takes part in the competition. But the Ice Hockey World Federation IIHF doubted the performance of the Chinese men’s national team and considered removing the country from the tournament because of the risk of double-digit defeats. It wasn’t until December that the federation gave the green light after watching two games of the Kunlun Red Star team, which competed in the Russian Kontinental Hockey League, due to Covid. A team consisting entirely of Kunlun Red Star players will now compete in the tournament.
And on the ski ramp? “We are on the brink of major breakthroughs in ski jumping,” ski jumping team manager Xu Gaohang recently told China Daily. In addition to the three individual athletes, efforts are still underway to secure a qualifying spot in the team event. The jumpers’ chances, however, are uncertain. After all, 20-year-old Song Qiwu from Sichuan left his mark this month in a practice jump at China’s Laiyuan large hill in Hebei: He set China’s new large hill record with a remarkable distance of 141.5 meters. This was particularly remarkable for someone who had been a hurdler until 2018.
Laiyuan has two ski jumps and the world’s largest wind tunnel, according to China Daily. It can generate wind from three directions and gusts of up to 50 meters per second. “The biggest advantage of training in the tunnel is that we can instantly feel the differences of various body postures against the flow and adjust accordingly,” Song told China Daily. This is important for athletes who cannot compete regularly. Because of Covid, China’s jumpers participated in very few international competitions.
This also applies to Dong Bing and only 17-year-old Peng Qingyue, who are competing in the women’s event. In one of these appearances, the World Cup in Klingenthal, Saxony, Dong Bing finished 21st. Dong and Peng are also among the few Olympians who have already tested the Olympic hill. At the Continental Cup – essentially the second division of the international ski jumping scene – in December, Dong finished second and Peng fourth. Clas Brede Braathen, Sports Director of the Norwegian Ski Federation and head of the China project at the time, said confidently in 2018, “We believe in them. I am convinced that they can become Olympic athletes and, more importantly, that a ski jumping culture can be developed for people in China. That would be fantastic.”
Europe is still a major power when it comes to setting technical norms and standards (European standards). However, its dominance, which was founded in the industrial age, is visibly crumbling: Within the framework of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), Europe has recently “been left out in the cold” when it comes to awarding secretariats for quantum computing, augmented reality, brain-computer interfaces, and lithium, said Reinhard Buetikofer, a Green Party industrial policy expert.
China in particular is working hard to transfer its growing economic importance to the international standardization organizations, thus giving its companies a head start in new technologies. The EU Commission recognizes the danger and wants to react: Next Wednesday, Vice President Margrethe Vestager and Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton will present their new standardization strategy.
The paper itself has not yet been released to the public, but the direction of the proposals is already clear: Norms and standards are to be defined in a more European, strategic, and faster manner.
In this way, the Commission wants to push back the influence of Chinese or US companies in the standards organization ETSI. There is considerable concern within the authority that foreign corporations such as Huawei have too much weight in the organization responsible for telecommunications standards. This is because voting rights in the bodies there are measured by the number of membership fees. This favors large companies, most of which come from the USA and Asia.
The Commission wants to counteract this: Experts from national standards organizations of the EU states are to be given more influence in ETSI committees, according to Brussels. To this end, the Commission will propose an amendment to the standardization regulation.
The strategy should also recommend abandoning the bottom-up approach that has prevailed in Europe to some extent. For decades, industry representatives have been negotiating technical specifications and procedures in standardization bodies, largely unhindered by politics. In the future, however, the Commission, member states, and industry are to jointly identify key technologies such as green hydrogen and initiate standardization projects there at an early stage, which should also be led by European experts in the international bodies, if possible.
Experts believe the push for more political influence is the right approach: In China, standardization is approached very strategically, says Sibylle Gabler, Head of Government Relations at the German Institute for Standardization (DIN). “In Germany and Europe, we should do the same.” For Buetikofer, the yardstick for the success of the new standardization strategy will be “whether we succeed in making cooperation between industry and politics more efficient.”
The German Electrical and Digital Manufacturers’ Association (ZVEI) is also open to combining the established approach of market-driven standards with a “political-strategic top-down approach”. “To this end, a continuous exchange between the EU Commission, member states, European standards organizations, and industry must be initiated,” wrote Jochen Reinschmidt, Head of the Innovation Policy department at ZVEI, in a recent article for Europe.Table.
In this context, the industry is also calling for more financial support from the government. It is expensive for companies to send employees to international standardization bodies. Standardization should therefore be seen as part of innovation policy, and active participation should be subsidized, according to the ZVEI. The Commission seems to be open to this.
The authority also wants to speed up standardization processes. At the moment, it takes too long, says ZVEI President Gunther Kegel: “We will then be kicked out of the standards race by the Americans, or, much worse, by the Chinese“ Especially in standardization at the European level, in the organizations CEN and CENELEC, numerous stakeholders would have to be involved.
However, Kegel also sees the responsibility with the Commission: With the so-called Harmonised Standards Consultants, the Commission has created another step that extends the processes even further. HAS consultants check on behalf of the Commission whether standards adopted by CEN and others are compatible with the original mandate of the authority and the relevant EU law.
The background to this are court rulings such as the James Elliott case. In its 2016 ruling, the ECJ held the Commission jointly responsible for the standards that had been developed by European organizations on its behalf. The authority, therefore, protects itself by having the finished standards reviewed by external consultants once more. However, Kegel criticizes that this further prolongs the process. For this reason, they are trying to convince the Commission that the HAS consultants should be involved in the standardization process from the very beginning.
In addition, the authority is likely to present a so-called non-paper, which is viewed very critically by national organizations such as DIN: It is aimed at so-called common specifications, which are increasingly being used by the Commission as an alternative to standards and norms. For example, the authority defines technical specifications within the framework of the Medical Devices Directive or the Battery Regulation, which products must meet in order to receive market approval. To justify this, it points out that harmonized standards do not yet exist in these areas.
DIN and other authorities, however, see this as an attempt by the Commission to dig deep into their territory. “The Commission should not try to establish a parallel system to the existing standardization organizations via Common Specifications,” says DIN representative Gabler. “That would risk fraying an established system and putting new specifications at odds with existing standards.” In collaboration with Amelie Richter
Mr. Emch, how entrenched is the idea in China that market dominance is bad for competition?
Very few of China’s domestic companies have had antitrust compliance on their radar in the past. A few years ago, a large Chinese state-owned enterprise even told us, to our astonishment, that Chinese antitrust law only applied to foreign companies. Such companies were only about growth at any price during this phase. Numerous investigations by the authorities and, not least, the antitrust guidelines issued in the past two years are now forcing Chinese companies to rethink their approach.
Did the tough regulation wave against tech companies come as a surprise to you?
No. China’s top leaders have openly signaled in advance that they will place greater emphasis on strengthening antitrust enforcement. On December 11, 2020, there was a corresponding meeting chaired by President Xi Jinping, at which it was even stated that strengthening anti-monopoly efforts would be one of the most important tasks for China in 2021. From that point on, it was clear where things were headed. Two weeks later, on December 24, 2020, it was then announced that Alibaba was being investigated for antitrust violations. On April 10, 2021, the company was fined around €2.4 billion.
But it didn’t stop at Alibaba.
Yes, that was just the beginning. On October 8, 2021, for example, a fine of €463 million was imposed on online food delivery company Meituan for similar violations. A few weeks earlier, during a Politburo meeting, President Xi reiterated the importance of trying to prevent anticompetitive behavior by online platforms and providing more support to competition regulators. He emphasized the need to increase investigation and sanctioning of monopolistic and unfair competitive behavior.
So it goes on?
Based on these developments, we can at least see that antitrust law is one of the most important instruments currently at the disposal of the authorities. Antitrust law lies at the intersection of economics, law, and politics and provides a deep insight into China’s inner workings – Chinese economic policy “en miniature,” so to speak, which maps the larger trend. That’s why it’s so intriguing.
Isn’t the central government also trying to use antitrust law to consolidate and expand its power over the economy?
It is also a matter of advanced competition law, i.e., of ensuring fair competition in a market economy. The central state is therefore not opposed even to competition between Chinese competition authorities at the regional level. In recent months, China’s competition authorities have been drafting guidelines for antitrust compliance. Several provincial offices of China’s State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR), have not issued a unified set of antitrust compliance guidelines, but each has issued its own, sometimes contradictory, but also complementary guidelines. Most recently, the local AMRs in Shaanxi, Jiangsu, and Ningxia published their respective guidelines on Nov 19, Sept 22, and Sept 7, 2021. In the meantime, the central authority has reconfigured itself under a new name – National Anti-Monopoly Bureau (AMR).
That sounds very messy. How many guidelines are there now?
I would not call it messy, but diverse instead. These three new guidelines bring the total number of guidelines issued by regional AMRs, including AMRs of cities under direct administration such as Beijing and Shanghai, to a staggering 18. Some of these local AMRs have even issued more than one guideline. Shanghai, for example, has already issued a general guideline on antitrust compliance in December 2019 and followed up with a local “standard” for antitrust compliance in November 2020. So well before the central government has, in a sense, focused on the issue.
How do the regulations differ?
There are both differences and similarities. I would like to single out two aspects. Based on some particular wording and content, it can be seen that some guidelines are “inspired” by others. And what they have in common is that they focus on both substantive antitrust law and procedural aspects, i.e., how to establish effective antitrust compliance systems in companies. However, the extent to which the various guidelines focus on substantive law as opposed to procedural issues (or vice versa) differs significantly.
What is the significance of the new regulations for foreign companies?
For most German and other foreign companies, the recommendations within the guidelines for setting up an antitrust compliance system are not of critical importance, as most companies already have functioning compliance processes in place. Indirectly, however, this change will have an impact. If local partners put more emphasis on establishing antitrust compliance, it means that joint ventures will have to follow suit. That’s why Western companies also need to be well-informed on these issues.
What is it about?
It is about setting up a system for identifying, assessing, and subsequently managing antitrust risks. This includes specific measures such as the establishment of a compliance department, the obligation of top management to comply with antitrust regulations, regular reporting or training.
And how does a company find its way through this regulatory maze?
As part of preventive efforts, many of the local AMRs provide consultation mechanisms in their guidelines. The basic idea is that a company can contact its local AMR and ask whether any specific conduct it may have engaged in or intends to engage in complies with antitrust law.
Isn’t that a little risky to draw attention to yourself that way?
In some places, the consultation may not only take place directly on behalf of the company but possibly also anonymously, for example through external lawyers. As a rule, the consulted authority does not take any action based on the information it obtains during the consultation. It would only take action if it received the same information from another source, for example from a complainant.
As a rule, you say: It does require some basic trust in the authorities, to report under your own name.
That is certainly true. However, the experience of consulting local AMRs that we have had with our clients has so far been positive.
Why must each province have its own antitrust compliance guideline? Especially given that the central SAMR itself issued a nationwide directive in September 2019. What is the strategy behind this?
One answer could be that the AMRs, as competition regulators, take competition very seriously – including competition among themselves. In 2018, the central SAMR already decreed that it would share its antitrust enforcement powers with the regional antitrust authorities in China’s provinces. Now that they have their own enforcement powers, some competition has naturally developed between the antitrust agencies. Who has more cases? Who has the most spectacular cases? This type of competition between antitrust authorities makes perfect sense and, incidentally, is also normal on the international stage.
Where do the local authorities get the courage to seek their own room for maneuver? Isn’t that risky towards Beijing?
No, I consider this more a natural progression as a result of speeches from Beijing’s leadership starting in the fourth quarter of 2020, which have brought antitrust enforcement into the national spotlight. With this backing from above, local antitrust authorities have now started to score points with the leadership and with the public by issuing their own guidelines. In doing so, they are signaling: We understand and are doing our part to help the process.
Could this not lead to a power struggle between headquarters and the provinces over responsibilities? The provinces’ own regulations also convey their own interests.
A direct power struggle is unlikely. But using their elbows a bit to get additional resources is. After all, renewal and expansion of the antitrust authorities are currently underway – mainly at the central level. But it is quite possible that the local antitrust authorities will try to get their piece of the pie, i.e., to also increase their antitrust departments or even obtain new enforcement powers, for example, in the area of merger control. But as I said, the relative “emancipation” of local authorities in the area of competition law is quite intentional on the part of headquarters, because it drives the development of antitrust law as a whole.
Does that mean this competitive dynamic will continue for a while?
As long as the fundamentals do not change – that is, as long as the renewal and expansions of antitrust authorities are not finished, and antitrust enforcement remains popular among citizens and leaders – we should assume that they will. As an example, the central SAMR issued antitrust guidance for the platform economy in February 2021. Now, the respective AMRs in Zhejiang – where Alibaba is headquartered – and Beijing – where JD.com is headquartered – issued their own competition compliance guidelines for platform companies in August 2021 and December 2021 (see here and here). In turn, Zhejiang Province’s AMR was the first local authority to take the initiative to issue a general antitrust compliance guideline back in July 2019, alongside Shanghai before Beijing.
But again, isn’t the central state, the Communist Party, worried about losing political influence?
Beijing is keen to ensure that Internet companies, as well as other businesses, are fully subject to competition law. That is why the role of regional competition enforcers is being upgraded. Their participation in enforcing competition law could help stabilize the economy and increase general approval of economic policy. We must not forget that this policy is very well received by both consumers and competitors of large companies. And that is the vast majority. That’s another reason why the provinces have leeway.
Swiss national Adrian Emch is one of the leading experts on European and Chinese regulatory law in China. Emch, who speaks five languages, is a partner at the British-American law firm Hogan Lovells, one of the top ten law companies in the world, with a revenue of $2.3 billion. At Chambers and Partners, the Michelin guide to lawyers, Emch is considered a leading individual in Chinese competition law. Emch studied in the US, Belgium, France, and Spain, began his career in the EU Directorate-General for Competition (DG COMP), and then practiced law for several years in Brussels, where he focused on European Union competition law. In July 2008, Emch went to China for the second time – just one month before the Chinese Anti-Monopoly Law came into force. Emch was thus able to witness from day one how Chinese antitrust law has developed since then. Emch is married to a Chinese lawyer and has two sons. He speaks fluent Mandarin and teaches competition law and EU law as a lecturer at Peking University.
The elephant in the room has to go first: Christian Hochfeld has been director of Agora Verkehrswende since 2016 and owns a car. Although his NGO has made it its mission to completely decarbonize the transport sector by 2045. A goal that has also been set by the German federal government – which, however, needs a cautionary guilty conscience to not forget this.
Or to not push responsibility away. “One question always comes up, and I can’t hear it anymore: ‘What are you personally doing for the traffic turnaround?’ It’s all well and good if more and more people are personally doing something for climate protection, but the responsibility lies with politics. It has to set the framework within which people move.” And Hochfeld and Agora Verkehrswende are constantly trying to remind politicians of this framework.
The Berlin native was politically shaped in the 1980s. A reactor exploded in Chernobyl, the German forests died and the Green Party was founded. Emotionally armed in this way, he began his studies in environmental technology in 1988.
That didn’t go as planned. His first semester coincided with the time of student protests, which is why he initially only learned how to juggle, as he says himself. When regular classes resumed, he realized the true nature of his chosen field of study. Environmental technology turned out to be an engineering degree at heart. Being required to cram fluid mechanics shocked not only him but some of his fellow students as well. Hochfeld went on a tour through South America, but then finished his studies in the end.
The year is 1996, and Hochfeld finds a position at the Öko-Institut, an association in Freiburg. The research institution supports environmental activists in court. At the time, it produced studies to oppose the construction of waste incineration plants and nuclear reactors. Here, Hochfeld realizes that environmental protection only achieves tangible results when it unites science and politics.
But climate policy only works on a global scale. “It was clear to me that the transport revolution would not be decided in Bielefeld, but Beijing. That’s why I went to China,” says Hochfeld, explaining his move to the German Corporation for International Cooperation GmbH (GIZ) in 2010, where he headed the sustainable transport project in the People’s Republic. “It was a somewhat naïve attitude. I went with the firm intention of being able to make a difference in China until I realized what we still have to learn in Germany.”
However, he was impressed by the dynamics of Chinese politics and economy. It was not Elon Musk who had made electromobility a global phenomenon, but the Chinese Ministry of Transport.
Things are moving more slowly in Germany – the players have to accept that. Politicians and top managers in the economy have to be convinced. Hochfeld firmly believes in this, he has made it his life’s work, and Agora Verkehrswende works on it every day. Christian Domke Seidel
Clattering chopsticks, bubbling jiaozi pots, rustling envelopes of money, and the roar of fireworks – sounds like China is celebrating the turn of the year. This time, the Chinese are leaping into the Year of the Tiger. It’s a good time to take a look at the tiger vocabulary that is stalking its way through everyday life in China.
For example, there are two other animals in tiger garb: The “wall tiger” (壁虎 bìhǔ), known to us as “gecko”, and the “water tiger fish” alias “piranha”. In fact, there are also “literary tigers” (文虎 wénhǔ) in China. These are not biting literary critics, but small poetic linguistic puzzles that can be a real pain in the neck. And if you’re really brave (or didn’t look properly when you were looking for a bride), you can bring a tigress into your house (母老虎 mǔlǎohǔ). The house tigress will especially bear her claws if you finished your cleaning, tidying, and ironing chores only in horse-tiger fashion (马虎 mǎhu “careless, sloppy, perfunctory, lax,” literally “horse-tiger”).
But sweat does not only bead on the forehead when wild furies whirl through everyday life at home, but also, for example, when the summer temperature has one last hurrah and claws a few autumn days – in China, this is called the “autumn tiger” (秋老虎 qiūlǎohǔ). Environmentalists, on the other hand, break out in a sweat when they think of factories that consume vast amounts of coal or electricity during production. In Chinese, such resource guzzlers are called “coal tigers” (煤老虎 méilǎohǔ) or “electricity tigers” (电老虎 diànlǎohǔ). Meanwhile, in the interpersonal sphere, beware of “laughing tigers” (笑面虎 xiàomiànhǔ). Flashing teeth in a tiger’s mouth does not bode well, after all. It is the Chinese version of the “wolf in sheep’s clothing”.
The big cats have also staked out a considerable territory on China’s proverb map. Here is a small selection of well-known Chinese tiger proverbs:
On that note: Happy Tiger Year! – 虎年快乐 hǔnián kuàilè!
Verena Menzel runs the language school New Chinese in Beijing.
The Winter Olympics kick off this week. On Friday evening, the participating nations will march into the Bird’s Nest in Beijing’s north. However, just days before the opening ceremony, more and more new Covid cases are popping up, even in the highly sealed-off Olympic bubble. Officials expect another surge by the end of the week.
Meanwhile, we take a look at the medal hopes of the People’s Republic. China’s athletes have been winning medals in short track and ski freestyle for years. And the odds are once again in their favor in these disciplines, our author Christiane Kuehl analyzes. In cross-country skiing, on the ice track or on the ski ramp, on the other hand, things look less promising for China.
The EU Commission is hoping for success in a different way. With its new standardization strategy, it wants to give Europe an edge over China. The paper is to be presented this week. The direction of the proposals is already clear, writes Till Hoppe: Norms and standards are to be defined more European, more strategically and at the same time more quickly in the future – and also copy some aspects from Beijing in the process.
In today’s interview, Swiss lawyer Adrian Emch explains the trials and tribulations of Chinese antitrust law. Emch is one of the leading experts in China on European and Chinese regulatory law. He is certain: “Antitrust law is one of the most important instruments currently at the disposal of authorities.” The harsh regulatory wave against tech companies hardly surprised him.
Have a pleasant week!
A few years ago, Chinese athletes suddenly appeared in Norway. Until then, they had trained in other disciplines ranging from trampoline, long-distance running, or kayaking. But now they were learning completely new things: ski jumping, cross-country skiing, or biathlon in the snow. A 2018 video showed giggling teens descending from a children’s ski jump for the first time in their lives, skis crossed and followed by a crash landing on green mats. There are cheers for the first jumper to stick the landing, ex-trampolinist Zhai Yujia.
In 2019, the original group shrank from 22 candidates to 10. “The selection process was maybe more brutal than they expected,” coach Kjetil Strandbraaten said at the time. One of the selection criteria: The group’s first test jumps in the snow. Zhai Yujia was allowed to remain. “I feel much more stable in all aspects and feel good jumping now,” she said afterward. She tells her mother in the video call, “Sitting on top was scarier, but once I jumped I was just fine.” Ex-sprinter Sun Jing was also allowed to stay on the team – even though she broke her arm in a fall in 2018 and had to take a longer break. That’s because the coaches were visibly impressed in the video by Sun’s determination. However, for now, their Olympic dreams have yet to be fulfilled. They are not among the two women and one man who are now competing for China in ski jumping.
China needs to replicate its hard efforts in ski jumping in other disciplines as well. The country lacks the expertise to build internationally competitive teams in many disciplines. To this end, China hired a plethora of veteran foreign coaches to train and work with athletes in China. And it has sent hundreds of young people overseas since 2017 to learn cross-country skiing, biathlon, or, indeed, ski jumping at elite facilities with world-class coaches. Most of them came from completely different sports and stood on skis for the first time at the beginning of the program. China has signed such agreements with 15 winter sports countries to train Chinese athletes at their national training centers, including Finland and Austria.
In Pyeongchang, China won only nine medals in 2018 and was ranked 16th in the nation standings at the end. The only gold was achieved by Wu Dajing in 500 meters short track, the fast-paced race against each other on a short ice track without tracks. China has won 10 of its 13 gold medals in the history of the Winter Olympics in this discipline. Olympic champion Wu Dajing will compete again in 2022, as one of ten on the team. He is one of China’s few medal candidates.
In short track, the prospects for the precious metal are generally the best: China’s skaters have won medals at every Winter Olympics since 2002, and even four in Vancouver 2010. Ice is typically good terrain for China’s athletes. In speed skating, there has always been a medal since 2006, not the least thanks to cooperation with coaches from the speed skating superpower Netherlands. Guo Dan (women’s mass start) or Ning Zhongyan (men’s 1,500 meters) are candidates for a medal. In figure skating, the Chinese so far did not land a podium in this millennium in 2014. In 2018, two-time world champion pair Sui Wenjing and Han Cong lost in pairs skating by a razor-thin margin to Germany’s gold medalists Aljona Savchenko and Bruno Massot. Sui and Han now want to finally win gold this time. There is also an outside chance for China’s curling ladies.
China also expects success in ski freestyle, where it won three medals in 2018. Freestyle encompasses several action sports on skis: moguls, ski cross, slopestyle, halfpipe, or aerials. While skicross is a competitive race on a single slope, the other disciplines award points for difficulty, perfection, or distance of partly highly acrobatic jumps. In the spectacular aerials (ski acrobatics), athletes jump over a snow jump and perform flips, spins and straddles. China took all 2018 freestyle medals in aerials. This year, Xu Mengtao and Kong Fanyu are considered medal contenders in the women’s event, and Sun Jiaxu and Jia Zongyang in the men’s event. Jia had taken silver in 2018.
But in 2022, China also has promising chances in the ski halfpipe – not to be confused with the snowboard halfpipe, which is also an Olympic event. American-born Eileen Gu is the benchmark here. The 18-year-old is now competing for China, as she announced a while back. At the X Games action sports festival in the US ski resort of Aspen at the beginning of January, Gu claimed three titles. Apart from the halfpipe, she also won the aerials and slopestyle. In this event, athletes use special skis to hurl themselves down a slope full of obstacles that resemble an urban skate park. Gu will compete in all three disciplines in Beijing. Medals are firmly in the cards.
But this is where the medal hopes end. So far, China has hardly played a role on the international ice track, the ski jump or the cross-country track. At least the many years of hard work with foreign coaching teams led to some surprise victories in 2021 in disciplines in which China had never stood out before. This was the case, for example, at the Skeleton World Cup in Innsbruck, where Geng Wenqiang unexpectedly took first place together with two other starters at the beginning of the season. The Chinese women’s double bobsleigh recently landed in a surprising sixth position in the World Cup. And biathlete Cheng Fangming finished twelfth in the sprint at the recent World Cup weekend in Oberhof, thanks mainly to solid shooting scores. They will all compete in Beijing.
Some of their coaches were once legends of their sport themselves. China’s biathletes, for example, are coached by former biathlon stars Ole Einar Bjoerndalen and Darja Domratcheva. Germany’s record Olympic bobsleigh champion, André Lange, coaches China’s bobsleigh team. But the job is still difficult: Bobsleigh, skeleton and, above all, luge are technically extremely demanding sports in which accidents occur time and again. In biathlon, the athletes still lack speed on the track. There also aren’t any Chinese cross-country skiing stars.
In ice hockey, in the meantime, China narrowly avoided embarrassment. The host traditionally always takes part in the competition. But the Ice Hockey World Federation IIHF doubted the performance of the Chinese men’s national team and considered removing the country from the tournament because of the risk of double-digit defeats. It wasn’t until December that the federation gave the green light after watching two games of the Kunlun Red Star team, which competed in the Russian Kontinental Hockey League, due to Covid. A team consisting entirely of Kunlun Red Star players will now compete in the tournament.
And on the ski ramp? “We are on the brink of major breakthroughs in ski jumping,” ski jumping team manager Xu Gaohang recently told China Daily. In addition to the three individual athletes, efforts are still underway to secure a qualifying spot in the team event. The jumpers’ chances, however, are uncertain. After all, 20-year-old Song Qiwu from Sichuan left his mark this month in a practice jump at China’s Laiyuan large hill in Hebei: He set China’s new large hill record with a remarkable distance of 141.5 meters. This was particularly remarkable for someone who had been a hurdler until 2018.
Laiyuan has two ski jumps and the world’s largest wind tunnel, according to China Daily. It can generate wind from three directions and gusts of up to 50 meters per second. “The biggest advantage of training in the tunnel is that we can instantly feel the differences of various body postures against the flow and adjust accordingly,” Song told China Daily. This is important for athletes who cannot compete regularly. Because of Covid, China’s jumpers participated in very few international competitions.
This also applies to Dong Bing and only 17-year-old Peng Qingyue, who are competing in the women’s event. In one of these appearances, the World Cup in Klingenthal, Saxony, Dong Bing finished 21st. Dong and Peng are also among the few Olympians who have already tested the Olympic hill. At the Continental Cup – essentially the second division of the international ski jumping scene – in December, Dong finished second and Peng fourth. Clas Brede Braathen, Sports Director of the Norwegian Ski Federation and head of the China project at the time, said confidently in 2018, “We believe in them. I am convinced that they can become Olympic athletes and, more importantly, that a ski jumping culture can be developed for people in China. That would be fantastic.”
Europe is still a major power when it comes to setting technical norms and standards (European standards). However, its dominance, which was founded in the industrial age, is visibly crumbling: Within the framework of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), Europe has recently “been left out in the cold” when it comes to awarding secretariats for quantum computing, augmented reality, brain-computer interfaces, and lithium, said Reinhard Buetikofer, a Green Party industrial policy expert.
China in particular is working hard to transfer its growing economic importance to the international standardization organizations, thus giving its companies a head start in new technologies. The EU Commission recognizes the danger and wants to react: Next Wednesday, Vice President Margrethe Vestager and Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton will present their new standardization strategy.
The paper itself has not yet been released to the public, but the direction of the proposals is already clear: Norms and standards are to be defined in a more European, strategic, and faster manner.
In this way, the Commission wants to push back the influence of Chinese or US companies in the standards organization ETSI. There is considerable concern within the authority that foreign corporations such as Huawei have too much weight in the organization responsible for telecommunications standards. This is because voting rights in the bodies there are measured by the number of membership fees. This favors large companies, most of which come from the USA and Asia.
The Commission wants to counteract this: Experts from national standards organizations of the EU states are to be given more influence in ETSI committees, according to Brussels. To this end, the Commission will propose an amendment to the standardization regulation.
The strategy should also recommend abandoning the bottom-up approach that has prevailed in Europe to some extent. For decades, industry representatives have been negotiating technical specifications and procedures in standardization bodies, largely unhindered by politics. In the future, however, the Commission, member states, and industry are to jointly identify key technologies such as green hydrogen and initiate standardization projects there at an early stage, which should also be led by European experts in the international bodies, if possible.
Experts believe the push for more political influence is the right approach: In China, standardization is approached very strategically, says Sibylle Gabler, Head of Government Relations at the German Institute for Standardization (DIN). “In Germany and Europe, we should do the same.” For Buetikofer, the yardstick for the success of the new standardization strategy will be “whether we succeed in making cooperation between industry and politics more efficient.”
The German Electrical and Digital Manufacturers’ Association (ZVEI) is also open to combining the established approach of market-driven standards with a “political-strategic top-down approach”. “To this end, a continuous exchange between the EU Commission, member states, European standards organizations, and industry must be initiated,” wrote Jochen Reinschmidt, Head of the Innovation Policy department at ZVEI, in a recent article for Europe.Table.
In this context, the industry is also calling for more financial support from the government. It is expensive for companies to send employees to international standardization bodies. Standardization should therefore be seen as part of innovation policy, and active participation should be subsidized, according to the ZVEI. The Commission seems to be open to this.
The authority also wants to speed up standardization processes. At the moment, it takes too long, says ZVEI President Gunther Kegel: “We will then be kicked out of the standards race by the Americans, or, much worse, by the Chinese“ Especially in standardization at the European level, in the organizations CEN and CENELEC, numerous stakeholders would have to be involved.
However, Kegel also sees the responsibility with the Commission: With the so-called Harmonised Standards Consultants, the Commission has created another step that extends the processes even further. HAS consultants check on behalf of the Commission whether standards adopted by CEN and others are compatible with the original mandate of the authority and the relevant EU law.
The background to this are court rulings such as the James Elliott case. In its 2016 ruling, the ECJ held the Commission jointly responsible for the standards that had been developed by European organizations on its behalf. The authority, therefore, protects itself by having the finished standards reviewed by external consultants once more. However, Kegel criticizes that this further prolongs the process. For this reason, they are trying to convince the Commission that the HAS consultants should be involved in the standardization process from the very beginning.
In addition, the authority is likely to present a so-called non-paper, which is viewed very critically by national organizations such as DIN: It is aimed at so-called common specifications, which are increasingly being used by the Commission as an alternative to standards and norms. For example, the authority defines technical specifications within the framework of the Medical Devices Directive or the Battery Regulation, which products must meet in order to receive market approval. To justify this, it points out that harmonized standards do not yet exist in these areas.
DIN and other authorities, however, see this as an attempt by the Commission to dig deep into their territory. “The Commission should not try to establish a parallel system to the existing standardization organizations via Common Specifications,” says DIN representative Gabler. “That would risk fraying an established system and putting new specifications at odds with existing standards.” In collaboration with Amelie Richter
Mr. Emch, how entrenched is the idea in China that market dominance is bad for competition?
Very few of China’s domestic companies have had antitrust compliance on their radar in the past. A few years ago, a large Chinese state-owned enterprise even told us, to our astonishment, that Chinese antitrust law only applied to foreign companies. Such companies were only about growth at any price during this phase. Numerous investigations by the authorities and, not least, the antitrust guidelines issued in the past two years are now forcing Chinese companies to rethink their approach.
Did the tough regulation wave against tech companies come as a surprise to you?
No. China’s top leaders have openly signaled in advance that they will place greater emphasis on strengthening antitrust enforcement. On December 11, 2020, there was a corresponding meeting chaired by President Xi Jinping, at which it was even stated that strengthening anti-monopoly efforts would be one of the most important tasks for China in 2021. From that point on, it was clear where things were headed. Two weeks later, on December 24, 2020, it was then announced that Alibaba was being investigated for antitrust violations. On April 10, 2021, the company was fined around €2.4 billion.
But it didn’t stop at Alibaba.
Yes, that was just the beginning. On October 8, 2021, for example, a fine of €463 million was imposed on online food delivery company Meituan for similar violations. A few weeks earlier, during a Politburo meeting, President Xi reiterated the importance of trying to prevent anticompetitive behavior by online platforms and providing more support to competition regulators. He emphasized the need to increase investigation and sanctioning of monopolistic and unfair competitive behavior.
So it goes on?
Based on these developments, we can at least see that antitrust law is one of the most important instruments currently at the disposal of the authorities. Antitrust law lies at the intersection of economics, law, and politics and provides a deep insight into China’s inner workings – Chinese economic policy “en miniature,” so to speak, which maps the larger trend. That’s why it’s so intriguing.
Isn’t the central government also trying to use antitrust law to consolidate and expand its power over the economy?
It is also a matter of advanced competition law, i.e., of ensuring fair competition in a market economy. The central state is therefore not opposed even to competition between Chinese competition authorities at the regional level. In recent months, China’s competition authorities have been drafting guidelines for antitrust compliance. Several provincial offices of China’s State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR), have not issued a unified set of antitrust compliance guidelines, but each has issued its own, sometimes contradictory, but also complementary guidelines. Most recently, the local AMRs in Shaanxi, Jiangsu, and Ningxia published their respective guidelines on Nov 19, Sept 22, and Sept 7, 2021. In the meantime, the central authority has reconfigured itself under a new name – National Anti-Monopoly Bureau (AMR).
That sounds very messy. How many guidelines are there now?
I would not call it messy, but diverse instead. These three new guidelines bring the total number of guidelines issued by regional AMRs, including AMRs of cities under direct administration such as Beijing and Shanghai, to a staggering 18. Some of these local AMRs have even issued more than one guideline. Shanghai, for example, has already issued a general guideline on antitrust compliance in December 2019 and followed up with a local “standard” for antitrust compliance in November 2020. So well before the central government has, in a sense, focused on the issue.
How do the regulations differ?
There are both differences and similarities. I would like to single out two aspects. Based on some particular wording and content, it can be seen that some guidelines are “inspired” by others. And what they have in common is that they focus on both substantive antitrust law and procedural aspects, i.e., how to establish effective antitrust compliance systems in companies. However, the extent to which the various guidelines focus on substantive law as opposed to procedural issues (or vice versa) differs significantly.
What is the significance of the new regulations for foreign companies?
For most German and other foreign companies, the recommendations within the guidelines for setting up an antitrust compliance system are not of critical importance, as most companies already have functioning compliance processes in place. Indirectly, however, this change will have an impact. If local partners put more emphasis on establishing antitrust compliance, it means that joint ventures will have to follow suit. That’s why Western companies also need to be well-informed on these issues.
What is it about?
It is about setting up a system for identifying, assessing, and subsequently managing antitrust risks. This includes specific measures such as the establishment of a compliance department, the obligation of top management to comply with antitrust regulations, regular reporting or training.
And how does a company find its way through this regulatory maze?
As part of preventive efforts, many of the local AMRs provide consultation mechanisms in their guidelines. The basic idea is that a company can contact its local AMR and ask whether any specific conduct it may have engaged in or intends to engage in complies with antitrust law.
Isn’t that a little risky to draw attention to yourself that way?
In some places, the consultation may not only take place directly on behalf of the company but possibly also anonymously, for example through external lawyers. As a rule, the consulted authority does not take any action based on the information it obtains during the consultation. It would only take action if it received the same information from another source, for example from a complainant.
As a rule, you say: It does require some basic trust in the authorities, to report under your own name.
That is certainly true. However, the experience of consulting local AMRs that we have had with our clients has so far been positive.
Why must each province have its own antitrust compliance guideline? Especially given that the central SAMR itself issued a nationwide directive in September 2019. What is the strategy behind this?
One answer could be that the AMRs, as competition regulators, take competition very seriously – including competition among themselves. In 2018, the central SAMR already decreed that it would share its antitrust enforcement powers with the regional antitrust authorities in China’s provinces. Now that they have their own enforcement powers, some competition has naturally developed between the antitrust agencies. Who has more cases? Who has the most spectacular cases? This type of competition between antitrust authorities makes perfect sense and, incidentally, is also normal on the international stage.
Where do the local authorities get the courage to seek their own room for maneuver? Isn’t that risky towards Beijing?
No, I consider this more a natural progression as a result of speeches from Beijing’s leadership starting in the fourth quarter of 2020, which have brought antitrust enforcement into the national spotlight. With this backing from above, local antitrust authorities have now started to score points with the leadership and with the public by issuing their own guidelines. In doing so, they are signaling: We understand and are doing our part to help the process.
Could this not lead to a power struggle between headquarters and the provinces over responsibilities? The provinces’ own regulations also convey their own interests.
A direct power struggle is unlikely. But using their elbows a bit to get additional resources is. After all, renewal and expansion of the antitrust authorities are currently underway – mainly at the central level. But it is quite possible that the local antitrust authorities will try to get their piece of the pie, i.e., to also increase their antitrust departments or even obtain new enforcement powers, for example, in the area of merger control. But as I said, the relative “emancipation” of local authorities in the area of competition law is quite intentional on the part of headquarters, because it drives the development of antitrust law as a whole.
Does that mean this competitive dynamic will continue for a while?
As long as the fundamentals do not change – that is, as long as the renewal and expansions of antitrust authorities are not finished, and antitrust enforcement remains popular among citizens and leaders – we should assume that they will. As an example, the central SAMR issued antitrust guidance for the platform economy in February 2021. Now, the respective AMRs in Zhejiang – where Alibaba is headquartered – and Beijing – where JD.com is headquartered – issued their own competition compliance guidelines for platform companies in August 2021 and December 2021 (see here and here). In turn, Zhejiang Province’s AMR was the first local authority to take the initiative to issue a general antitrust compliance guideline back in July 2019, alongside Shanghai before Beijing.
But again, isn’t the central state, the Communist Party, worried about losing political influence?
Beijing is keen to ensure that Internet companies, as well as other businesses, are fully subject to competition law. That is why the role of regional competition enforcers is being upgraded. Their participation in enforcing competition law could help stabilize the economy and increase general approval of economic policy. We must not forget that this policy is very well received by both consumers and competitors of large companies. And that is the vast majority. That’s another reason why the provinces have leeway.
Swiss national Adrian Emch is one of the leading experts on European and Chinese regulatory law in China. Emch, who speaks five languages, is a partner at the British-American law firm Hogan Lovells, one of the top ten law companies in the world, with a revenue of $2.3 billion. At Chambers and Partners, the Michelin guide to lawyers, Emch is considered a leading individual in Chinese competition law. Emch studied in the US, Belgium, France, and Spain, began his career in the EU Directorate-General for Competition (DG COMP), and then practiced law for several years in Brussels, where he focused on European Union competition law. In July 2008, Emch went to China for the second time – just one month before the Chinese Anti-Monopoly Law came into force. Emch was thus able to witness from day one how Chinese antitrust law has developed since then. Emch is married to a Chinese lawyer and has two sons. He speaks fluent Mandarin and teaches competition law and EU law as a lecturer at Peking University.
The elephant in the room has to go first: Christian Hochfeld has been director of Agora Verkehrswende since 2016 and owns a car. Although his NGO has made it its mission to completely decarbonize the transport sector by 2045. A goal that has also been set by the German federal government – which, however, needs a cautionary guilty conscience to not forget this.
Or to not push responsibility away. “One question always comes up, and I can’t hear it anymore: ‘What are you personally doing for the traffic turnaround?’ It’s all well and good if more and more people are personally doing something for climate protection, but the responsibility lies with politics. It has to set the framework within which people move.” And Hochfeld and Agora Verkehrswende are constantly trying to remind politicians of this framework.
The Berlin native was politically shaped in the 1980s. A reactor exploded in Chernobyl, the German forests died and the Green Party was founded. Emotionally armed in this way, he began his studies in environmental technology in 1988.
That didn’t go as planned. His first semester coincided with the time of student protests, which is why he initially only learned how to juggle, as he says himself. When regular classes resumed, he realized the true nature of his chosen field of study. Environmental technology turned out to be an engineering degree at heart. Being required to cram fluid mechanics shocked not only him but some of his fellow students as well. Hochfeld went on a tour through South America, but then finished his studies in the end.
The year is 1996, and Hochfeld finds a position at the Öko-Institut, an association in Freiburg. The research institution supports environmental activists in court. At the time, it produced studies to oppose the construction of waste incineration plants and nuclear reactors. Here, Hochfeld realizes that environmental protection only achieves tangible results when it unites science and politics.
But climate policy only works on a global scale. “It was clear to me that the transport revolution would not be decided in Bielefeld, but Beijing. That’s why I went to China,” says Hochfeld, explaining his move to the German Corporation for International Cooperation GmbH (GIZ) in 2010, where he headed the sustainable transport project in the People’s Republic. “It was a somewhat naïve attitude. I went with the firm intention of being able to make a difference in China until I realized what we still have to learn in Germany.”
However, he was impressed by the dynamics of Chinese politics and economy. It was not Elon Musk who had made electromobility a global phenomenon, but the Chinese Ministry of Transport.
Things are moving more slowly in Germany – the players have to accept that. Politicians and top managers in the economy have to be convinced. Hochfeld firmly believes in this, he has made it his life’s work, and Agora Verkehrswende works on it every day. Christian Domke Seidel
Clattering chopsticks, bubbling jiaozi pots, rustling envelopes of money, and the roar of fireworks – sounds like China is celebrating the turn of the year. This time, the Chinese are leaping into the Year of the Tiger. It’s a good time to take a look at the tiger vocabulary that is stalking its way through everyday life in China.
For example, there are two other animals in tiger garb: The “wall tiger” (壁虎 bìhǔ), known to us as “gecko”, and the “water tiger fish” alias “piranha”. In fact, there are also “literary tigers” (文虎 wénhǔ) in China. These are not biting literary critics, but small poetic linguistic puzzles that can be a real pain in the neck. And if you’re really brave (or didn’t look properly when you were looking for a bride), you can bring a tigress into your house (母老虎 mǔlǎohǔ). The house tigress will especially bear her claws if you finished your cleaning, tidying, and ironing chores only in horse-tiger fashion (马虎 mǎhu “careless, sloppy, perfunctory, lax,” literally “horse-tiger”).
But sweat does not only bead on the forehead when wild furies whirl through everyday life at home, but also, for example, when the summer temperature has one last hurrah and claws a few autumn days – in China, this is called the “autumn tiger” (秋老虎 qiūlǎohǔ). Environmentalists, on the other hand, break out in a sweat when they think of factories that consume vast amounts of coal or electricity during production. In Chinese, such resource guzzlers are called “coal tigers” (煤老虎 méilǎohǔ) or “electricity tigers” (电老虎 diànlǎohǔ). Meanwhile, in the interpersonal sphere, beware of “laughing tigers” (笑面虎 xiàomiànhǔ). Flashing teeth in a tiger’s mouth does not bode well, after all. It is the Chinese version of the “wolf in sheep’s clothing”.
The big cats have also staked out a considerable territory on China’s proverb map. Here is a small selection of well-known Chinese tiger proverbs:
On that note: Happy Tiger Year! – 虎年快乐 hǔnián kuàilè!
Verena Menzel runs the language school New Chinese in Beijing.
