Reasons for anti-monopoly
In the social and economic development, the rapid development of an industry, in addition to the support of the state and the needs of society, is bound to have a strong capital injection. The essence of capital seeking profits will remain unchanged for ten thousand years. In order to get more profits, capitalists will promote the fierce competition among enterprises in the industry through various means and share as many big cakes as possible. Abundant capital can often bring advanced technological innovation and strong competitiveness. The strong survive, the weak are eliminated, and enterprises that lack sufficient competitiveness can only be annexed or withdrawn. In the long run, industry resources and capital will further move closer to the head enterprises. After high concentration, free competition will inevitably lead to monopoly. Large-scale production after monopoly can not only bring consumers more cost-effective products, but also reduce the waste of social resources. However, in recent years, some domestic platforms have taken advantage of monopoly and adopted unfair competition to stifle competitors, which has seriously affected the healthy and effective development of the industry, led to the widening gap between the rich and the poor, and has been denounced by public opinion, which has become a major problem to be solved urgently in today's social and economic development.
At the Central Economic Work Conference in 2020, the state listed "strengthening anti-monopoly and preventing disorderly expansion of capital" as one of the important tasks of 202 1. We must resolutely curb all kinds of unfair competition and promote the high-quality development of various industries. As soon as the country reached the task, all departments began to whip, and anti-monopoly related laws and regulations ushered in an intensive landing period.
Recent important anti-monopoly policies:
65438+ 10 9-10 The Central Political and Legal Work Conference called for strengthening anti-monopoly and anti-unfair competition law enforcement and justice. Promote the standardized development of Internet platform enterprises in accordance with the law and improve relevant laws and regulations.
65438+1October 10, Gao Fa proposed to strengthen judicial anti-monopoly and anti-unfair competition.
65438+1October 3 1 day, the Central Office and the State Council issued the Action Plan for Building a High-standard Market System, clearly proposing to strengthen and improve the anti-monopoly and anti-unfair competition law enforcement.
On February 7th, the State Council Anti-monopoly Committee issued the Anti-monopoly Guide for Platform Economy.
The continuous strengthening of anti-monopoly measures is conducive to the balanced and benign development of China's enterprise groups and industrial structures. It also helps to stimulate the innovation and creativity of enterprises and strengthen the high-quality development of the industry. The keynote of the Central Economic Work Conference is undoubtedly telling us that the anti-monopoly cycle has arrived.
Drawing lessons from the development experience of developed countries, we find that every anti-monopoly cycle is in the stage of technological maturity to promote social development. At this time, the industrial scale has been relatively determined, and the industrial increment continuously created through technological innovation is in a state of marginal decline. In order to maintain profit growth, head enterprises can only seize market share by means of scale effect, forming a situation of "big fish eat small fish". In this way, it will inevitably lead to the "disappearance" of some small and medium-sized enterprises, thus weakening the competitiveness of the industry and making the labor market unbalanced. The intensification of the polarization between the rich and the poor and the dissatisfaction of the workers will also make the society increasingly vocal about taking measures to redistribute wealth, including strengthening anti-monopoly.
In 2020, the sudden epidemic swept the world, and all walks of life suffered a serious blow. Some small and medium-sized enterprises with low anti-risk ability are gradually eliminated by the market, which accelerates the clearing of the industry and further forms the monopoly pattern of leading enterprises. In addition, the A-share market, which has made a lot of noise in the past year, has made these leading enterprises hit record highs, and the helm and executives of these enterprises have ushered in explosive growth of wealth. In contrast, under the influence of the epidemic, many low-and middle-income workers are facing unemployment and bankruptcy. The polarization of wealth is too serious, which is not conducive to the stable development of society, and it is difficult not to sting the hearts of the income-damaged classes, thus forming a public opinion to strengthen anti-monopoly. Of course, the state cannot turn a blind eye to this, and various anti-monopoly investigations will be officially opened.
Anti-monopoly case analysis
First of all, it must be clear that anti-monopoly does not mean suppressing leading enterprises, and it will not hinder the development of enterprises. The original intention of antitrust is to maintain the competitive vitality of the industry and promote the high-quality development of enterprises. The penalties for anti-monopoly law enforcement in the world generally include fines, splitting, technology enjoyment, ownership change and so on. For different industries, the impact of anti-monopoly is also very different.
Then, do other industries also apply spin-off as a powerful anti-monopoly measure? Certainly not!
In 1980s, American Bell Telephone Company operated 82% of national telephone service and 90% of long-distance service. Its vertical monopoly on the industrial chain forced other enterprises to gradually withdraw. Subsequently, the U.S. Department of Justice initiated three antitrust lawsuits against Bell, and eventually Bell was split into a parent company specializing in long-distance telephone business and seven other companies. After the spin-off, without the support of monopoly excess profits, Bell's market share has shrunk sharply, scientific research funds have been stretched, and researchers have lost a lot, and the company's benefits have changed.
It can be seen that for science and technology enterprises, anti-monopoly law enforcement is too rigid and easy to break, and reasonable guidance may have better results.
1998 90% of the operating system market belongs to Microsoft. Taking advantage of this monopoly position, Microsoft pre-installed its own IE browser in the system and suppressed other browser companies-Netscape. In 2000, the US government accused Microsoft of abusing its monopoly position to stifle other competitors, and the judicial department tried to split Microsoft into operating system and application software, which could not be merged for 10 years. After Microsoft's repeated appeals, Microsoft finally reached a settlement agreement with the Ministry of Justice and local state governments: 1) Microsoft agreed to open API interfaces to third-party companies and provide information such as source code for the past five years, and accept compliance supervision by the Ministry of Justice; 2) Change the sales mode of bundled software, separate the browser from the operating system software, and the total settlement cost with the local government is about1800 million USD. From the final result, Microsoft's R&D capability has not been lost because of the anti-monopoly split, Windows system is still constantly updated, and the technological innovation of emerging products such as Google browser has also continuously replaced IE browser.
On the whole, for the anti-monopoly treatment in the field of science and technology, the real breakthrough should be correctly guided, so that enterprises can change the monopoly pattern in the original field through technological innovation and realize the blow of dimension reduction. In this way, new enterprises in the industry can win-win with the original enterprises.
Enlightenment of anti-monopoly
After reading the above cases, let's look at the monopoly of domestic platform economy. In the early stage of the development of platform economy, it is difficult for enterprises to obtain customers. Enterprises usually invest a lot of R&D costs to build platform architecture and algorithms. At this time, the cost of obtaining traffic is very high. After these infrastructures are mature, the marginal cost for enterprises to obtain traffic and data is decreasing, and they can get traffic returns only by paying part of the operating costs. But now the number of Internet users in China is basically saturated, and the access to traffic has entered the era of stock game, which makes Internet companies with leading technological advantages constantly expand their "scale" in pursuit of platform economy, in order to seek the continuous improvement of market concentration after technology monopoly. In recent years, relying on the scale advantage of capital investment, platform economic giants such as Ali and Tencent have continuously expanded their investment territory, behind which are well-known national apps such as Didi Chuxing, Meituan and Pinduoduo. These giants have the advantages of capital and technology, crowding out competitors through subsidies and low prices, and seizing domestic traffic. Nowadays, some platforms even use their own advantages to start the activities of "choosing one from two" and "killing big data", once again restraining free competition and causing hidden dangers of platform economic monopoly.
Before, the state has always tolerated these "technology" enterprises to obtain excessive monopoly profits, hoping to encourage the innovative spirit of enterprises with excess profits. Only when the head enterprises are committed to infrastructure construction and cutting-edge innovation can the industry achieve the overall enlargement of the "cake". If Internet monopoly enterprises are only satisfied with their existing achievements or rely on scale advantages to further erode the social stock "cake", it is completely contrary to the above original intention. The Anti-monopoly Guide of Platform Economy was issued to maintain the healthy development of the industry. At present, the monopoly pattern has been formed and the leading position in the industry is stable. Even if tough "split" measures are taken, it is difficult to subvert the status quo and fundamentally achieve the purpose of anti-monopoly. Judging from the anti-monopoly experience of the United States in the past hundred years, "correct guidance" is the most effective measure to solve the current problems. Internet leading enterprises can't just stare at China, it's time to show the social responsibility of leading enterprises! Through sharing technology, open network platform and other infrastructure, we will strengthen healthy competition in the market, release the innovation vitality of the industry, and realize the expansion of the big cake of the industry. Let more enterprises go abroad and step onto the world stage to achieve a win-win situation for both industries and enterprises. In the long run, the probability of international star enterprises appearing in China is bound to increase greatly, and it is expected that real century-old enterprises will be born in the future.