On 2 January 2021, the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) issued a draft amendment to the Anti-Monopoly Law. On November 18 of the same year, the State Anti-Monopoly Administration was established. Head to tail, frame a "year of antitrust".
The Paper analyzed the "anti-monopoly" administrative punishment cases announced by the Anti-Monopoly Bureau, and tried to clarify what "anti-monopoly" was anti-? What does it have to do with public life?
2021, a new starting point for antitrust
On the official website of the Anti-Monopoly Bureau of the State Administration for Market Regulation (hereinafter referred to as the Anti-Monopoly Bureau), the earliest announcement of an administrative punishment case was published in July 2013, which was authorized by the State Administration for Industry and Commerce to file a case and investigate the suspected monopolistic behavior of enterprises. According to statistics, a total of 12 administrative punishment cases were reported that year, most of which were caused by the monopoly of local industry associations.
Before 2018, anti-monopoly law enforcement work was undertaken by the Ministry of Commerce, the National Development and Reform Commission, and the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, and in 2018, the Anti-Monopoly Bureau of the State Administration for Market Administration and Supervision was established as an anti-monopoly specialized agency. In 2021, the State Anti-Monopoly Administration was officially listed and became the deputy ministerial-level state bureau of the State Council.
In 2021, the Anti-Monopoly Bureau reported 118 "anti-monopoly" administrative penalty cases, which is almost the sum of the six years from 2015 to 2020.
The protagonist of "anti-monopoly" has also changed, from local industry associations to Internet companies.
Among the 118 administrative punishment cases, 93 belonged to the category of "concentration of undertakings that were not declared in accordance with the law and illegally implemented", involving Tencent, Ali, ByteDance and other leading Internet companies. Almost blanketly, the Anti-Monopoly Bureau "dug up" the actions of these enterprises in setting up joint ventures and acquiring equity to gain control of the enterprises without declaring them according to law. The earliest of these can be traced back to 2011, When Tencent acquired 10% of Cheetah Mobile's shares, and did not submit a declaration before completing the equity delivery on July 7 of the same year, and ten years later, on July 6, 2021, the State Administration for Market Regulation made an administrative penalty decision on Tencent on this incident.
What is antitrust against?
On April 10, 2021, Alibaba was found guilty of "abusing its dominant market position" and fined 18.2 billion yuan for implementing the "two alternatives" behavior, prohibiting operators on the platform from opening stores and participating in promotional activities on other competitive platforms, and on October 8, Meituan was also fined 3.4 billion yuan for "choosing one of the two". These two cases are perhaps the two most famous "antitrust" events in 2021 – the tech giants have paid a high price for their "overbearing" business models.
Beneath the surface of the water, tech giants also have many rather secret "tentacles" reaching out in all directions. For example, "Huidi Tianjin" and "Jiaxing Entrepreneurship" are wholly-owned subsidiaries of "Xiao orange Kuaizhi Company" ("Didi"), and these two enterprises have been punished for setting up joint ventures with "Toyota", "FAW Group", "Huaxia Chuxing" and other companies without declaring according to law, but from the name alone, they cannot see their relationship with "Didi".
In addition, Tencent's acquisition of equity is also extremely frequent, and many of them have not been declared according to law, so they have paid tens of millions of fines.
In addition to "choosing one of the two" to restrict operators and other competitive platforms from trading, what else have companies participating in monopolies done?
Judging from the situation revealed in the circular, "monopoly" is actually not only the mutual competition, shielding and unlimited expansion of Internet platforms, but also penetrates into the details of public life. On October 15, 2020, the Shanghai Tourism Industry Association was fined 200,000 yuan for organizing the operators of cruise ships in the city to negotiate for many times to fix or change the price of "classic tour" and "special tour" passenger boat tour services. An administrative penalty case disclosed on August 30, 2021 pointed out that "Shaanxi Provincial Water Affairs Group Jingyang County Water Supply Co., Ltd. abused its dominant market position, causing serious inversion of water prices and a single source of income for enterprises".
However, in the 118 "anti-monopoly" administrative punishment cases notified in 2021, the companies involved were more likely to be punished for illegally establishing joint ventures or acquiring equity without declaring in accordance with the law. Under the organization of industry associations, local enterprises have reached and implemented monopoly agreements to control prices, divide markets, restrict transactions, restrict production... The industry is fully controlled.
In 2021, the "anti-monopoly" action accelerates, and the protagonist of this year is the Internet platform. Around these enterprises that "dominate" the digital life of the public, and even have a huge impact on real life, issues such as platform economic labor rights, user privacy, and algorithms have also been discussed a lot. The era of "barbaric growth" of the Internet is over.