Coca-Cola’s $2.5 billion offer last week for China Huiyuan Juice Group Ltd. already has stirred nationalist opposition. Comments posted on Chinese Web sites criticised the sale as the loss of a leading company to foreign owners.

The anti-monopoly law, which took effect August 1, was welcomed by foreign business groups as a step toward clarifying commercial conditions in China. But Beijing has released no details of what companies must do to comply.

Regulators have yet to receive a request from Coca-Cola for approval to buy Huiyuan, state television said on its Web site in a report dated Sunday.

“This acquisition is a very big one. So when we receive the application, we will inspect it carefully in accordance with the Anti-Monopoly Law,” a ministry spokesman, Yao Shenhong, was quoted as saying. The Commerce Ministry did not respond Monday to questions by phone and fax about the status of the proposed purchase. A Coca-Cola spokesman in Hong Kong, Kenth Kaerhoeg, said the company will do “whatever it takes to facilitate this process” but declined to say whether it has submitted a formal application or comment on details of the review.

China is the world’s leading destination for foreign investment. But the purchase of established companies is still rare and politically sensitive. In July, the US investment fund Carlyle Group ended a three-year effort to buy a stake in a Chinese maker of construction equipment following regulatory resistance and public complaints about the sale of assets to foreigners. Beijing stepped up scrutiny of foreign acquisitions of Chinese assets following Carlyle’s bid for Xugong Group. The government enacted a rule last year requiring a national security review for foreign acquisitions in some industries.

The government’s reaction to the Carlyle bid prompted US officials to express concern about how Chinese regulators were handling proposed acquisitions.

Taking over Huiyuan would give Coca-Cola a leading position in China’s competitive beverage market. Huiyuan is the top Chinese producer of fruit juices and analysts estimate it has about 42 per cent of its market.

The new anti-monopolies law of China which took effect from August 1 will be applied to the proposed Huiyuan takeover

No request has yet been received by regulators from the Coca-Cola Company for approval to buy the juice major

The acquisition is being viewed by a large section of the Chinese as violative of the country’s national pride