Extract

This chapter will give a general overview of the Chinese public procurement legislation. It starts with a concise and general introduction to the field of law and follows the logic of a procurement procedure from determining the applicable law to the criteria employed in awarding the contract. After covering the field of law in Section 2, the applicable law is considered in Section 3. Issues raised here include the personal scope, thresholds and the material scope. The substantive provisions of the law are addressed in Section 4. Here issues of procedure, transparency of tenders and eligibility requirements for candidates are examined. Last but not least, the award of the contract is discussed. This section touches upon the awarding criteria that may be employed and upon rules that govern the conduct of public procurement authorities in the event of the need to discontinue a procurement procedure. Section 5 closes this overview with a reference to the general provisions. This systematic treatment provides the framework for a clear recognition of the areas of law which need to be fleshed out in more detail in order to provide for an effective treatment of bid rigging conspiracies. Before starting, it should be mentioned that in China the more detailed regulations to implement provisions are often left for state organs to draft, since the laws appear to be rather general and avoid detailed stipulations.