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Rethinking Competition Policy in China’s Digital Markets: The Shift From Fair Play to Fair Deal
WANG Xuan
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DOI:10.17265/1548-6605/2025.07.005
University of International Business and Economics (UIBE), Beijing, China
In today’s digital economy, the rapid development of platform economies is posing new challenges to traditional regulatory models. Foreign platform regulations, represented by those of the European Union, in fact protect three types of legal interests: the public interest, the legitimate rights and interests of competitors, and the legal interests of trading partners. They also balance two different types of legal relationships: competitive relationship and transactional relationship. This provides useful lessons for the healthy and orderly development of platform economies. China’s current Anti-Monopoly Law and Anti-Unfair Competition Law mainly focus on protecting competitive relationships. Although the E-Commerce Law does cover transactional relationships to some extent, it is limited by the context of its time and cannot keep up with the rapid development of new types of online services in the mobile internet era. To better protect the legitimate rights and interests of parties in platform economy transactions and to promote the sustainable and healthy development of platform economies, it is necessary to further highlight the principle of protecting fair trading in the general provisions of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law. Based on transactional relationships, all platform online transactions and services should be included in a comprehensive regulatory system. A more scientific and rational legal framework for platform regulation should be built to promote high-quality development of China’s platform economy on the track of the rule of law.
transactional relationships, platform regulation, E-Commerce Law, Anti-Monopoly Law, Anti-Unfair Competition Law
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