Legal Regulation Of Abuse Of Dominant Market Position By Super Platforms

The development of the digital economy and the rise of the platform economy model have given rise to platform economies,or super platforms,that have a huge number of users,occupy a large number of market resources,have a monopoly market position and exclusive advantages,and have an enormous effect on the economy,politics and society.These super platforms,represented by Google,Microsoft,Tencent and Alibaba,have brought great changes to the economic development model of the current society,and the super platforms not only promote the rapid development of the economy,but also bring convenience to people’s daily life.However,at the same time,the super platforms have brought harm to competition based on their highly concentrated resources and structures,wide radiation range,and various means of competition,and have triggered a series of thoughts on the safe operation of super platform economy and compliance competition.In recent years,anti-monopoly enforcement agencies around the world have started to investigate the monopolistic behavior of super platforms,and there have been hot cases related to super platforms in China,which shows that how to balance the rapid development and compliance of super platforms has become a common focus and difficulty for all sectors of society,while the characteristics of the multilateral market of super platforms have brought a double challenge to China’s anti-monopoly law regulation in terms of legislation and enforcement.The challenges are twofold.At present,the normative legal documents that can be applied to regulate the abuse of market dominance by super platforms in China include the Anti-monopoly Law,the E-commerce Law,the Interim Provisions on the Prohibition of Abuse of Dominant Market Position and the Anti-monopoly Guidelines on the Field of Platform Economy,etc.However,the many characteristics of platforms determine the limitations of the traditional analysis method,and the current competition law shows the limitations for the current competition law shows weakness and helplessness in regulating platforms.At the same time,from the perspective of law enforcement,due to the non-price and hidden nature of super-platform monopolies,anti-monopoly enforcement agencies encounter many obstacles when defining the relevant market,determining dominant position and identifying abusive behavior.With the anti-monopoly law as the basic to effectively regulate the abuse of market dominance by super platforms,the current relevant system in China should be improved.The first is the need to adjust the previous law enforcement concept based on the principle of inclusive and prudent,and establish a positive,collaborative,prudent and lawful law enforcement concept to strengthen regulation.The second is that in defining the relevant market,firstly,the super platform should be distinguished according to whether it has the characteristics of multilateral market;secondly,in defining the elements of the relevant market,non-price factors need to be considered and the relevant market should be defined by situation according to the different roles of data in the operation of the super platform;again,in defining the methods of the relevant market,the analysis means of economics should be combined and the free operation mode of the super platform should be considered in Thirdly,in terms of determining the dominant position,it is important to consider the relevant market.Thirdly,in terms of determining the dominant position,firstly,the number of users can be used as the criteria for determining whether the super platform has a dominant position in the market;secondly,in the comprehensive criteria,each element should be improved according to the characteristics of the super platform itself.Fourth,in terms of identifying abusive behavior,the criteria for identifying price abuse,tying behavior and "two-for-one" behavior should be improved.