Bird & Bird has added a Chinese antitrust partner in Beijing.

Zhaofeng Zhou was most recently counsel at Anglo-German firm Taylor Wessing. Zhou advises on merger control and market dominance-related disputes and investigations, typically in the aviation, automobile and pharmaceutical sectors.

Zhou says he sees increasing overlap between Bird & Bird's specialty in intellectual property and his antitrust experience in China, especially after the investigations against Qualcomm Inc. and InterDigital Inc. Both companies are under antimonopoly investigations by China's National Development and Reform Commission after accusations that they overcharged Chinese customers. Despite the regulator's strong denial, some analysts have speculated that the government is using the probes as leverage in negotiating licensing fees for the companies' patented fourth-generation wireless network technologies.