HKU Competition Law Lecture Series
Competition and Regulation in China’s Platform Economy
The crux in regulating digital economy lies in platform anti-monopoly. As long as the competition mechanism functions, there is no need for governmental intervention. While the digital economy presents strong features of natural monopoly, it also produces countering factors such as multi-homing effects and differentiated competition. Given such complexities, the EU and the US have established different regulatory frameworks on big platforms. The EU is active in strengthening competition law enforcement, and also imposing regulatory obligations based on the Digital Markets Act. On a stark contrast, the US is almost dormant on digital regulation, and has not taken any substantial measures so far. Both approaches aim at promoting their own digital economies with subtle political considerations. The comparisons and contrasts between the US and the EU demonstrate that it is feasible for China to first maintain the fundamental position on cyber-space sovereignty, and then to sufficiently balance multiple factors, including monopoly, competition, and innovation. It is thus proposed to extend the traditional spectrum and methods of competition law through the concept of minimum efficient scale. Meanwhile, attention should also be paid to disordered expansion of super-big platforms, and moreover, to impose sector-specific regulation classification and grading where there is no effective competition.
About the Speaker
Professor of Competition Law, Director of the Economic Law Division, and Director of the Coase Center for Law and Economics at KoGuan Law School, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Discussant
Professor and the founding Executive Director of the Centre for Legal Innovation and Digital Society (CLINDS) at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) Faculty of Law
Chair
AIIFL Fellow and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, The University of Hong Kong