The Anti-Monopoly Law Regulation Of "Super Platform" Data Blocking Behavior

Thanks to the prosperity of the digital economy,benefiting from the world’s largest market,and policy incentives for innovation,China’s platform economy has developed rapidly in recent years,giving birth to "super platforms" represented by Alibaba,Tencent,Baidu,and others with "super user scale,super wide business types,and super high economic volume".The so-called "super platform" refers to an internet platform with a massive user base,a "super" position across markets and industries,the ability to control and supervise operators within the platform,and the "super control" of all entities and resources entering and exiting the platform ecosystem.In the context of the digital economy,"super platforms" have a user base and data resources that can occupy a competitive advantage in the market.As the value of data becomes increasingly prominent,"super platforms" with a large amount of data resources may refuse to share data with data demanders due to interest considerations.The data blocking behavior of "super platforms" refusing data sharing,if it is based on policy regulations or contractual authorization to fulfill platform governance responsibilities,or implemented based on commercially reasonable reasons,has certain rationality and should not be regulated.On the contrary,if the data blockade behavior of "super platforms" hinders the free flow of data elements or disrupts the market environment of free and fair competition,it has a certain degree of harm and should be regulated.Therefore,it is necessary to distinguish between different situations where data blockade behavior needs to be regulated,and divide "super platform" data blockade behavior into reasonable "super platform" data blockade behavior and harmful "super platform" data blockade behavior.In general,the harmful "super platform" data blocking behavior can be regulated by the way of industry supervision of government departments,or by formulating new policies and regulations to give "super platform" special data sharing obligations,or by the relevant provisions of competition laws such as the Anti-monopoly Law and the Anti-unfair competition Law.Considering that the data blockade behavior of "super platforms" may violate the provisions of the "Prohibition of Abuse of Market Dominance" in the Anti-monopoly Law,such as refusing transactions,limiting transactions,differential treatment,and attaching unreasonable conditions,focusing on the regulation methods of data blockade behavior of "super platforms" in the field of anti-monopoly,studying how the antimonopoly law responds to the rise of "super platforms" and how to effectively regulate "super platforms",How to adapt to the data blockade behavior of the "super platform" regulated by the digital economy is the core issue to be addressed in this article.Due to the particularity of cross market and cross industry competition of "super platforms",there are difficulties in defining the relevant markets of "super platforms" and determining the dominant market position of "super platforms" in the application process of the Anti-monopoly Law.Moreover,the existing competition damage analysis methods also face difficulties in analyzing the data blockade behavior of "super platforms",and the localization of the necessary facilities theory in the data field is difficult,which makes it difficult to apply the analysis framework of China’s existing Anti-monopoly Law’s abuse of market dominance.It is worth noting that the current anti-monopoly law regulations on data blockade of "super platforms" in China have not broken through the existing anti-monopoly analysis framework.Therefore,it is possible to optimize the application of the antimonopoly law framework and improve the anti-monopoly regulatory system for data blockade behavior of "super platforms" in China.One is to optimize the determination of market dominance in the regulation of data blockade behavior on "super platforms" by appropriately introducing the theory of necessary facilities in actual discretion;The second is to improve the competitive damage analysis method for data blockade behavior and optimize the damage analysis for regulating data blockade on "super platforms";The third is to promote market research and antitrust compliance on "super platforms" in accordance with the law and regulations,and promote the pre and post prevention path of antitrust law on data blockade of "super platforms".In addition,in the process of antitrust law enforcement practice,relevant guidelines can be refined,and relevant market definition methods for "super platforms" can be appropriately considered to be included.It can even be considered to directly infer that "super platforms" have a dominant market position,in order to optimize the determination of market dominance when "super platforms" block data,and to refine the criteria for determining necessary facilities for data composition,regulating the data blockade behavior of "super platforms".