The platform economy needs to shift from "price competition" to "quality and innovation competition"
2026-07-03
Since June, a series of measures taken by market regulatory authorities have sent a clear signal towards deepening the rectification of "internal competition" in the platform economy field.
In the field of food delivery, the State Administration for Market Regulation has issued the "Ten Rules for Subsidy Behavior of Food Delivery Platforms (Draft for Comments)" in response to the food delivery subsidy war, proposing that platforms shall not exclude or restrict market competition and disrupt market competition order by carrying out long-term and large-scale subsidies;
In the field of intra city freight transportation, the State Administration for Market Regulation issued a notice to supervise leading enterprises in the industry to implement anti-monopoly compliance rectification, stop unreasonably lowering freight rates, cancel mandatory car stickers, and reduce platform commission rates, becoming the first case of anti-monopoly supervision in the algorithm field;
In the field of e-commerce, the Beijing Municipal Administration for Market Regulation has announced that the "6.18 billion yuan subsidy" does not mean that platforms invested billions of yuan to subsidize consumers during the "6.18" period. Many platforms have not clearly defined the actual subsidy amount invested and the proportion of investment between platforms and merchants
In recent years, China's platform economy has flourished, with new formats and models constantly emerging, playing an important role in technological innovation, boosting domestic demand, and stabilizing employment. However, for some time now, there have been occurrences of "involution style" competition characterized by forced participation of platform operators, low profits or losses, and deterioration of product and service quality. Guiding the platform economy to shift from "price competition" to "quality and innovation competition" is an inevitable requirement for promoting the healthy development of the platform economy.
The Central Economic Work Conference held at the end of last year proposed to "deeply rectify 'internal competition'. Rectifying "internal competition" is an important institutional arrangement to promote high-quality economic development in China. In the field of platform economy, the prominent manifestation of "internal competition" is the "subsidy war", "price war", and "track war", where a large amount of resources are consumed in the price game, squeezing the resources for quality upgrading and technological innovation, and affecting the quality of products and services. Regulatory authorities should coordinate and collaborate to guide competition to return to efficiency and innovation.
The key to the success of the platform economy ecosystem lies in the platform enterprises. Platform enterprises should shoulder their main responsibility, abandon short-sighted behavior of pursuing traffic unilaterally, improve algorithm transparency, and let technology return from "involution means" to "efficiency tools". To safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of operators, new forms of employment workers, consumers and other relevant entities within the platform, and to build a win-win platform economic ecosystem.
In the face of problems and challenges arising from the development of the platform economy, China has constantly improved the platform economic governance mechanism, implemented the Measures for the Supervision and Management of Online Trading Platform Rules, implemented the Guidelines for Anti monopoly Compliance of Internet Platforms, and established the National Technical Committee for Standardization of Platform Economic Governance. Positive progress has been made in the standardized and healthy development of the platform economy. Especially in the field of platform economy anti-monopoly, regulatory authorities comprehensively utilize the anti-monopoly "three books and one letter" system, adopt "hierarchical supervision" measures, proactively resolve monopoly risks, and strengthen social supervision. In the future, the hierarchical regulatory enforcement toolbox will become more abundant, promoting the continuous improvement of the normalized regulatory system for platform economy. At the same time, it is necessary to further improve the cross departmental regulatory coordination mechanism of the platform economy, strengthen cross regional and cross level regulatory linkage, and enhance the comprehensive regulatory capacity and level of the market.
The regulation of platform economy should adhere to both regulatory norms and promoting development, and improve the normalized regulatory system of platform economy, so that enterprises can clarify what they can and cannot do, and thus form a more stable development expectation. We need to thoroughly rectify the "internal competition" and promote the platform economy to move from the extensive growth of "traffic is king" to a new stage of high-quality development of "algorithm transparency, reasonable pricing, rights protection, and multi-party win-win", and continue to provide strong support for high-quality development. (Outlook New Era)
Edit:Luoyu Responsible editor:Wang Erdong
Source:people.cn
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