China News Service, Beijing, November 17 (Reporter Pang Wuji) Does the anti-monopoly on platforms that represent technological innovation mean discouraging innovation?
Huang Qunhui, director of the Institute of Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, stated at a briefing held by the State Council on the 17th that on the contrary, this not only protects consumer rights, but also encourages innovation.
The State Administration for Market Regulation recently released the "Guidelines for Anti-Monopoly on Platform Economy (Draft for Comment)."
According to this guide, the platform requires merchants to "choose one of two", "killing" consumers with big data, and using rules, algorithms, technology, traffic distribution and other unjustified refusal to conduct transactions may be deemed to have a monopoly. behavior.
Huang Qunhui said that in 2015, China proposed to establish the basic status of competition policy, which is consistent with the establishment of a market economy system, and industrial policies should be matched on the basis of competition policy.
In the competition policy, anti-monopoly and anti-unfair competition are very key elements.
The release of the anti-monopoly guidelines for the platform economy this time is a reflection of China's continued implementation of competition policies.
"This is nothing new," he said. There are many similar anti-monopoly enforcement actions against large platforms in the world, and the amount of punishment is tens of billions of yuan.
Many platforms themselves are representatives of technological innovation. Will this affect innovation?
Huang Qunhui pointed out that in fact, before the platform becomes large-scale and forms a monopoly position, it is very innovative, but once the platform economy is formed, it has a monopoly position in the relevant market, but it hinders innovation.
He pointed out that there is no shortage of such examples in the market. When some small companies make disruptive innovations that will affect the existing business models of large platform companies, large platforms will often spend money to acquire this small company or this innovative solution.
But the acquisition of it is not to use it, but to seal it up to protect its inherent business model. In this sense, it has hindered innovation.
Therefore, the introduction of anti-monopoly policies in the field of platform economy can not only protect fair competition and protect consumer interests, but also further encourage innovation.
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