Article 20 of China’s Anti-Monopoly Law (AML) expressly permits exemptions for agreements pursuing environmental protection, commonly referred to as the ‘green exemption’, but this mechanism has remained largely dormant in practice. This article examines whether China’s competition law regime suffers from a ‘sustainability deficit’, a concept that has emerged prominently in debates over the objectives of EU competition law. It argues that, despite the statutory recognition of environmental protection in Article 20, the green exemption remains difficult to invoke in practice due to conceptual ambiguity, procedural deficiencies, and institutional constraints. In particular, the AML provides no clear standards for identifying environmental agreements, assessing environmental benefits, or reviewing exemption claims, while existing exemption cases reveal a judicial tendency to prioritize conventional competition analysis over uncertain or long-term public-interest benefits. Against the backdrop of China’s rapidly evolving environmental governance framework and the newly promulgated Ecological and Environmental Code, this article proposes targeted reforms to ssolve the sustainability deficit and facilitate the practical application of the green exemption. These include clarifying substantive standards, incorporating environmental expertise into competition review, and establishing structured review mechanisms supported by ex ante consultation and ex post monitoring.
World Competition