Abstract: In recent years, China has been making efforts to promote the implementation of fair competition review and strengthened the fundamental position of competition policy. In consideration of the coordination of competition policy and other economic policies, China's fair competition review system has an exception system, which allows policies and measures that have a certain restrictive effect but meet the prescribed conditions. However, due to the abstraction and vagueness of relevant rules, the application of the exception system could be abused or misused, which undermines the effectiveness of the fair competition review system. Although the Detailed Rules for the Implementation of the Fair Competition Review System has been officially promulgated, the application of the exception system has many problems both in terms of entities and procedures. To build a fair competition review exception system that meets China's national conditions, it is recommended to clarify exceptions and restrictive conditions based on the principle of proportionality and subsidiary restriction theory in terms of the entity level;and in terms of procedures, to form a scientific and feasible operating process and supervision mechanism.

Key words: fair competition review, exception system, anti-monopoly law, principle of proportionality, subsidiary restriction theory