Research On E-Commerce Laws And Regulations For Self-Preferential Behavior Of E-Commerce Platform

With fierce competition in e-commerce industry,self-operated business opens up a new profit model for e-commerce platform operators besides platform business.Self-preferential behavior is generated by the vertical integration behavior of the platform.The platform adopts the vertical integration way to extend its business to the downstream industry,so as to obtain the dual position of the market and the enterprise,and promote its self-operated business to gain competitive advantages in the competition with other businesses.Although self-operated business itself can increase the choice of consumers and reduce transaction costs between upstream and downstream enterprises,platform operators’ preferential treatment of self-operated business destroys the fair competition environment and leads to the formation of too high barriers to entry,which is not conducive to the reasonable development of market competition order.Some Internet digital platforms have already possessed and abused their dominant market position to give preferential treatment to themselves,destroy the free market competition order and harm the welfare of consumers.As a special law with e-commerce platform as the object of regulation,Article 22 and Article 35 of the E-commerce Law can regulate the self-preferential behavior of e-commerce platform,which is of great significance to maintain the order of e-commerce.However,there are still some problems in practice,such as the deviation of legislative orientation,the insufficient legitimacy of regulatory legislation,and the difficulty in determining the scope of application.This thesis will define the specific extension of self-preferential behavior to distinguish it from other monopolistic behaviors,and put forward suggestions on the governance of e-commerce platforms and the improvement of corresponding systems,including the improvement of the regulation provisions of platform self-preferential behavior in the E-commerce Law.In terms of our current legal system,the E-commerce Law,the Anti-Unfair Competition Law and the Anti-Monopoly Law all have corresponding provisions to regulate the self-preferential behavior of large e-commerce platforms.Based on the unified application of coordinated laws,the regulation of the self-preferential behavior can be divided into three dimensions: E-commerce platform with a relatively advantageous position applies to E-commerce Law;The Anti-Monopoly Law applies to e-commerce platforms with dominant market positions;For e-commerce platforms that have neither a dominant market position nor a comparative advantage,the Anti-Unfair Competition Law should be applied.Platform is the gatekeeper for other operators to enter the economic field of platform.The Anti-monopoly Law can only solve part of the problems,and it is difficult to realize the anti-monopoly of platform alone.The ultimate solution can only be the introduction of industry regulations.It is necessary to accelerate the establishment of the platform economy "all-round,multi-level,three-dimensional regulatory system,to achieve the pre-event,post-event,whole-chain and whole-field supervision" as the goal,and build the anti-monopoly law enforcement leading and industry regulation collaborative regulatory mode.