Definition And Supervision Of Self-preferential Behavior Of Platform Operators Under The Antitrust Syste

The term “Self-preferencing” derived from extraterritorial sources is a translated term in China.Since its birth,the term has attracted the attention from the antimonopoly circle to the issue of preferential treatment for self-operated businesses by operators.As a way for operators to use leverage transmission in adjacent markets to gain their own advantages,self-preferencing enables enterprises to apply existing market resources or rules to favor their own products or services specifically,so as to achieve the goal of maximizing benefits.Judging from the extraterritorial etymological research,the term self-preferencing is closely related to Foundem’s opposition statement against Google,and the discussion context focuses on the field of antitrust.In addition,the existing regulatory cases also focus on the field of platform economy mostly.The term self-preferencing in the Chinese sense covers several phenomena of operators’ preferential treatment of their own business in the form of proper nouns.Based on the diversity of ways to achieve self-preferencing,the usage scenarios gradually show a trend of generalization.Extraterritorial experience shows that the positioning of self-preferencing in the antimonopoly rule system should be incorporated into the framework of market dominance,and the specific elements should be summarized.The term self-preferencing with descriptive characteristics is facing the possibility of expanding its scope.When the realization method of self-preferencing completely overlaps with the existing illegal elements in the domestic type of abuse of market dominance,the relevant behavior can be applied in accordance with the corresponding abuse of market dominance clause.The types of self-preferencing that are difficult to be accurately covered by the current law as narrow self-preferencing,which reflect the new behavioral characteristics of vertically integrated companies that use their dominant position in one market to abuse it in other markets.Specific analysis of such behaviors should be focused on.Compared with the existing types of abusive behavior in China,there are still many differences between the narrow self-preferencing behavior and the traditional behavior such as rejection of transactions,tying and differential treatment.For example,behavioral motivation,behavioral performance,behavioral effects and specific transaction objects.Regarding the proposal for regulatory improvement,on the basis of fully understanding the logic of competition supervision behavior,it is necessary to improve the existing legal provisions,optimize regulatory methods,and deal with the market failures that may be caused by the enterprises’ implementation of self-preferencing behavior better.