The new generation of network information technologies such as Internet, big data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence are booming, and a number of emerging Internet platform enterprises are growing rapidly, which has profoundly changed the production and lifestyle in various fields of economy and society. The platform has increasingly become an important organizational model in the digital economy era, and its attributes are directly related to the governance rules and responsibilities of the platform, as well as the policy orientation of government supervision. A profound analysis of the attributes and characteristics of emerging Internet platforms is of great practical significance for implementing the requirements of inclusive and prudent supervision and building a new regulatory framework that adapts to the development of platform economy.
How to understand the emerging Internet platform
Driven by the new generation of information technology, all kinds of new services and applications are developing vigorously, and the platform organization mode is adopted to attract different user groups to settle in the platform, and by providing information services, the interaction or transaction between various users is promoted. It can be said that the emerging Internet platform is the organizer and important carrier of online market transactions.
On the one hand, the emerging Internet platform is a market organization that mediates and links multiple groups to promote their interaction. Their common feature is to provide physical or virtual places for the interaction between different customer groups, provide intermediary services and maintain the order of the platform. Internet has broken the geographical and time-space restrictions, and enterprises can integrate multi-party resources on a global scale by building various innovative business application platforms. These emerging Internet platforms, as a new market organization, reduce the transaction cost between customers and maintain the order of transactions within the platform by setting up platform rules.
On the other hand, emerging Internet platforms are online licensed platforms that provide information services or content services based on data and algorithms. In order to solve the problem that it is difficult to accurately match the cross-regional supply and demand information, the emerging Internet platform technically collects various data such as subject information, product or service information, user comment information, etc., and provides search, bidding, scheduling, payment, credit and other services with the help of software algorithms to match the supply and demand sides, improve transaction efficiency, and also need to obtain permission from relevant regulatory authorities.
We should also see that the emerging Internet platform is gradually becoming a key link in the digital economy ecosystem. With the help of the advantages of network economy and relying on its advantages in the core business market, emerging Internet platforms penetrate into other fields, and finally build a digital economy ecological chain based on their respective core businesses. In the eco-chain, by publishing platform rules, platform enterprises clearly define subject access, behavior norms, content review, service quality, user protection, dispute resolution, illegal information prevention, etc., and set up corresponding incentive and restraint measures such as user evaluation and credit system. In fact, relying on the advantages of technology, computing, data and user scale, the emerging Internet platform has become the maker of platform operation rules, the maintainer of platform operation order and the carrier of platform digital ecosystem.
How to Understand the "Facilities" Attribute of Emerging Internet Platforms
With the increasing scale of users, market share and influence of emerging Internet platforms, some people think that emerging Internet platforms have become infrastructure or public utilities, others think that they are key information infrastructure, and others think that they are necessary facilities. The key to these different views is that the basic concepts of different "facilities" have not been clarified.
Emerging Internet platforms are different from traditional infrastructure or utilities. Traditionally, infrastructure or public utilities usually refer to physical facilities, assets and networks, such as power grids, oil and gas pipelines, etc., and also include new infrastructure such as industrial Internet and Internet of Things. These physical facilities have high replication costs and low substitutability. The emerging Internet platforms are mostly composed of remote server clusters or data centers, application program interfaces (API) for third-party merchants, application programs (APP) for user terminals or websites, which have the characteristics of light asset scale, rapid business change and many alternative products. Its key assets are big data resources and algorithm libraries, and its competitive advantages come from technological innovation, network effects and economies of scale. Therefore, they are quite different from each other in terms of business access, competitiveness, market barriers, economic and social influence and supervision orientation.
Whether emerging Internet platforms can be included in the scope of key information infrastructure remains to be clarified by national laws and regulations. Critical information infrastructure refers to network facilities or information systems that may seriously endanger national security, national economy and people’s livelihood and public interests once they are destroyed or lose their functions and data are leaked. At present, the scale of large-scale platform users in China is generally above 100 million, and the business volume and income reach more than several trillion yuan. Once it is destroyed, it will affect a wide range. At present, to bring emerging Internet platforms into the scope of key information infrastructure, it needs to be formally defined by relevant national legislation, and it needs to be considered from the perspectives of network security and data security.
Whether the emerging Internet platform is a necessary facility needs to be defined according to its commercial behavior and market competition conditions. Necessary facilities is a term in the field of anti-monopoly, which is closely related to monopoly position and market competition. The principle of necessary facilities derived from this means that monopoly enterprises with necessary facilities have the obligation to open their facilities for the use of third parties, including competitors. In practice, the identification of necessary facilities must meet a series of conditions, such as the necessity and feasibility of providing facilities access, the reproducibility of facilities, and the rationality of refusing to open. Whether the emerging Internet platform has a large number of users and participates in the competition on a global scale constitutes a necessary facility in the sense of anti-monopoly still needs to be judged in accordance with the anti-monopoly law and the competition constraints of its related markets, and it cannot be easily determined that it is a necessary facility.
How to supervise emerging Internet platforms and their competitive behaviors?
Compared with ordinary market competitors, emerging Internet platform enterprises need to bear corresponding responsibilities and obligations no matter what facilities they are identified as. In this regard, the regulatory authorities can adopt relevant strategies to promote healthy competition in the platform market and maintain fair competition market order.
First, scientifically define the boundary and scope of "facilities". At present, the society generally has mixed concepts and misunderstandings about whether the emerging Internet platform belongs to infrastructure or necessary facilities. In this regard, we should first scientifically define the connotation and extension of infrastructure or necessary facilities, as well as their scope and boundaries, and avoid the definition of infrastructure being too wide and too broad. For emerging Internet platforms, we should scientifically define and identify their specific categories according to national laws and regulations, combined with the technical and economic characteristics and identification standards of these Internet platforms.
The second is to play the role of the market and strengthen platform self-discipline. The Internet platform market presents a high degree of dynamic competitiveness, with a series of characteristics such as cross-border competition, subversive innovation, and multi-user ownership, which has strong constraints on the business behavior and governance rules of the Internet platform. We should fully respect the business rules and competitive logic of the Internet platform market, and realize that demand-side network effect and supply-side economies of scale will not only drive the market to present a winner-takes-all situation, but also stimulate potential competitors to focus on market segments and participate in market competition through technological innovation, network effect and service improvement. We should ensure the normal functioning of the market mechanism, reasonably define the responsibilities of platform enterprises, and provide self-discipline constraints for Internet platform enterprises.
The third is to innovate the anti-monopoly policy of emerging Internet platforms. The original intention of the anti-monopoly policy is to protect fair competition in the market. Monopoly status itself is not illegal, but monopolistic behavior is illegal. When the market share of traditional market or infrastructure industry is highly concentrated, anti-monopoly institutions should be vigilant when enterprises adopt behaviors such as pricing below cost, bundling, market blockade, vertical restraint and discriminatory pricing. In contrast, when Internet platform enterprises adopt the above business strategies, in some cases, they will improve the efficiency of resource allocation and enhance the welfare of consumers. However, the international community has begun to pay close attention to their merger and acquisition of start-ups and then exclude potential competition. Therefore, we should follow the principle of reasonable inference, dialectically treat the commercial behavior and competitive strategy of the Internet platform, encourage benign fair competition, and promptly investigate and deal with the behavior of restricting or crowding out competition on the platform.
Fourth, it is necessary to be cautious in supervising emerging Internet platforms. Considering that the platform economy, as a new thing, is still in the stage of rapid growth, we should adhere to the concepts of tolerance and prudence, neutral supervision and mild supervision, balance the relationship between supervision and innovation, innovate the traditional supervision framework in time, and create access rules in line with its operating characteristics. We should combine the characteristics of the bilateral market of the Internet market, dynamic innovation, platform competition, technological change and the costs and benefits of government supervision, constantly enrich the technologies and means of supervision and governance, innovate the collaborative governance mechanism with platform enterprises, and build a new type of supervision and governance system that adapts to the development characteristics of platform economy, participates in many parties and is compatible with incentives. (Ma Yuan, Chloe Wang, Institute of Market and Price, China Macroeconomic Research Institute, Enterprise Research Institute, the State Council Development Research Center)
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