BEIJING (AP) -- Coca-Cola Co. will have to submit its bid to buy a Chinese juice producer for review under China's new anti-monopoly law, state television reported, setting up the first major test of the legislation.

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 criticized the sale as the loss of a leading company to foreign owners.

The anti-monopoly law, which took effect Aug. 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 U.S. investment fund Carlyle Group ended a three-year

NEW YORK (AP) -- Altria, the U.S. leader in cigarettes, wants to be No. 1 in smokeless products too.

The owner of the nation's biggest cigarette seller said Monday that it will buy UST, the maker of Skoal and Copenhagen, in a $10.4 billion deal that is part of the wider consolidation of the global tobacco industry.

Observers say Lorillard, which was spun off from Loews Corp. in June, could be next on the list of potential targets.

"It's going to put pressure on everybody else to consolidate," said Sachin Shah, an analyst with iCap Equities. Shah said tobacco leaf producer Universal Corp. and Vector Group Ltd. could also be potential targets.

Altria owns the Marlboro brand and the nation's biggest cigarette maker, Philip Morris USA. It has been test marketing Marlboro brand smokeless products, but analysts say the results have been disappointing so far. Its acquisition of UST will give it a strong position in smokeless tobacco, a segment of the U.S. market that is growing as cigarettes decline.

American smokers are buying fewer cigarettes as smoking bans and health concerns dampen demand by 3 percent to 4 percent a year. That has forced tobacco companies to look for sales growth from alternatives such as cigars, chewing tobacco and snus, teabag-like pouches that are popular in parts of