Regulator to ensure fair competition

The State Administration for Market Regulation, the nation's top market regulator, has said it will further improve the enforcement of the fair competition policies and enhance the antimonopoly efforts to continuously regulate the competitive behaviors in key areas, including the platform economy.

Zhang Gong, director of the State Administration for Market Regulation, said in an interview with the Xinhua News Agency on Thursday that as the country is on track to building and optimizing a fair, transparent and predictable competition environment, the administration will keep improving the fair competition system and enhance the related law to improve the fair competition system and further lay a solid foundation for the rule of law.

He said the administration will help accelerate the revision of the anti-monopoly law, revise the anti-unfair competition law in a timely manner, and continuously improve the supporting legislation,

The SAMR will also constantly improve the following: the market access system; the fair competition review mechanism; the digital economy fair competition supervision system; and the system to prevent and stop the abuse of administrative power.

It will strive to eliminate and restrict competition, so as to draw the bottom line for market subjects.

The regulator will strengthen the supervision and law enforcement of antitrust and unfair competition and prevent the disorderly expansion of capital.

Improvements to the monitoring, evaluation and early warning system for market competition, and strengthening of research, identification and early warning of monopoly and competition disorder risks are on top of the agenda, he said.

"We will continue to regulate competition behaviors in key areas such as platform economy, scientific and technological innovation, information security and the public's livelihood," Zhang said. Efforts will be made to strictly investigate and punish monopolistic agreements, abuse of market dominance and other monopoly behaviors, as per the law.

The regulator will continue to strengthen the antitrust review of business concentration, and promote the good pattern of benign interaction and coordinated development among large, medium-sized and small enterprises and guide the whole society to form a market environment, protecting and promoting fair competition.

One of the priorities for the regulator is to further improve the regulatory system and the regulatory efficiency. For example, the administration will strengthen the connection between administrative law enforcement and judicial protection, the coordination of market supervision and industry management, and the coordination of competition policy and industrial policy, he said.

Promoting the integration of online and offline channels, supervision before, during and after the event, and accelerating the construction of an all-round, multilevel and three-dimensional supervision system are also essential.

Zhang also called for efforts to learn from international experience, strengthen openness and cooperation, participate in global governance, constantly improve the ability to adapt to and apply international rules, better support enterprises' innovative development and actively participate in international competition.

Since 2018, the administration has dealt with 345 monopoly cases, 37,000 unfair competition cases, 118,000 price violation cases and 1,920 business concentration cases.

The term platform economy refers to online marketplaces and other similar operations or businesses based on computer systems that allow consumers, entrepreneurs, businesses and the general public to connect, share resources or sell products or services.