Maersk Line, the world's biggest container shipping company, will pay 3.7 billion euros (£3.2 billion) to buy German rival Hamburg Sud.

The ministry, in a statement, said the company could not enter a new ship sharing alliance on Far East-South America routes in the five years after the deal.

The company will withdraw some ships from certain routes such as the Far East-western coast of South America, it added.

(Reporting by Beijing Monitoring Desk and Brenda Goh; Editing by Manolo Serapio Jr. and Susan Fenton)