Study On The Identification Of Abuse Of Dominant Market Position By Internet Platform

As a core impetus for economic development,digital economy has developed rapidly in the past 20 years and has brought great convenience to people's life.However,the unique characteristics of digital platform,such as network effect,locking effect,economies of scale,bilateral market,low marginal cost,leverage effect,dual identity and so on,endowed the digital platform with monopoly genes.In the platform economy area in China,the market structure has been viewed as highly concentrated,in which oligopoly or duopoly can be observed in some industries,market barriers are gradually increasing,and the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises are slowing down.A series of anti-competitive activities have emerged,among which the abuse of market dominant position by internet platform companies is particularly prominent.Anti-competitive behaviors such as "exclusive dealing","high portions of commission","self-referential treatment","differentiated pricing behavior with big data" and "interoperability blockade" emerged one after another,which are detrimental to the fair competition in the market.Since the first meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee in December 2020,"strengthen antitrust regulation and prevent disorderly expansion of capital" became the focus of government.the " strengthen antitrust regulation and further promote fair competition policy" was deliberated and adopted by the Central Comprehensive Deepening Reform Commission in August2021,from then,strengthening of antitrust regulation and reinforcement of competition policy have continuously appeared in the government policy documents?Been highly valued by the government,it has become the top-level design.The year of 2021 also became the first year of China's anti-monopoly law enforcement in the field of platform economy,the General Administration of Market Supervision has imposed administrative penalties and issued ultra-high fines on 43 undeclared concentration cases and on exclusive dealings practiced by Ali and Mei Tuan.While the unique business model and competitive characteristics of the digital economy,that featured with bilateral market,cross-border competition,zero price competition and dynamic competition,bring a series of antitrust regulation problems,invalidating the present analysis tools for the identification of abuse of dominant market position,resulting in difficulties in definition of relative product market,determination of market dominant position and identification of illegality in the field of the platform.Therefore,due to the particularity of digital economy,it is necessary to explore the multi-dimensional and multi-directional way for identification of abuse of dominant market position;Abandon the fetter of defining the relative market as necessary pre procedure,adhere to the principle of case analysis,and choose flexibly whether to define the relative market or not,depending on the nature of behavior and abundance of evidence;Return to the essence of dominant market position,which is companies are not fully constrained by the competition in the market,and have certain decision-making and activity ability room that independent of the market and customers,and the causal link between abuse behavior and market dominant position.with the thorough investigation of act and its negative effect,we are able to induce whether the subject company has the dominant market position or not;Return to the purpose of anti-monopoly regulation,which is to protect market competition,and focus on damages caused to competition and innovation,to determine the illegality of act.