The rule of law is breaking out in China – if not in politics, then in business. In the past month alone, Beijing regulators have used competition law for the first time to tackle monopoly behaviour at two state-owned telecoms groups, and a Shenzhen court has used Chinese intellectual property law to question Apple’s right to sell iPads in China.

There is an Alice in Wonderland quality to it all: China’s scion of central planning, the National Development and Reform Commission, has suddenly morphed into a US-style consumer advocate, indulging in its own version of Ma Bell busting almost exactly 30 years after the most famous competition ruling of all time, in US v AT&T.

And in an equally rare role reversal, a Chinese court has taken the moral high ground on an intellectual property issue. Apple is used to having other people stealing its IP in China. But now it is cast in the role of villain rather than victim: a Chinese judge last week rejected Apple’s claim that it – and not a Taiwan company that registered the trademark first – is the rightful owner of the iPad brand in China.