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Wen/Ba Jiuling
Source: Wu Xiaobo Channel (ID: wuxiaobopd)
With the development of the Internet in China for more than 30 years, the mainstream Chinese Internet has had a greater say both at home and abroad.
JD, Alibaba, Tencent, Xiaomi and other enterprises are among the Fortune Global 500 in 2020. Most of the rankings are in the front and middle.
Faced with such "behemoths", China's regulatory authorities seem to have begun to realize the necessity of strict management.
In April this year, Ali was fined 18.2 billion yuan for violating the Anti monopoly Law by forcing businesses to choose one from the other. This is the first time that the law shows its edge after more than ten years of implementation.
In this regard, the State Administration of Market Supervision stressed that it would continue to strengthen the anti-monopoly of platform economy. Antitrust may become a "normal".
At the same time, antitrust has become a major "killer" of peer competition in the Internet circle. For example, Yao Jinbo in the same city of 58 openly called for anti-monopoly punishment on shell house hunting; Byte skipping released a long article, accusing Tencent of blocking and blocking byte products, suggesting that it had monopoly behavior.
Why is it that we are now starting to launch a large-scale anti-monopoly campaign? What are the characteristics of Internet anti-monopoly. A few days ago, Mr. Wu had an in-depth discussion with two senior Internet users, Fang Xingdong and Wu Bofan, on Wu Chat.
From left to right: Fang Xingdong, Wu Xiaobo, Wu Bofan one
Why did you suddenly engage in antitrust
Wu Xiaobo: Why will antitrust become a mainstream voice in 2020?
Fang Xingdong: I think it has something to do with the general background. Since 2020, everyone has gone to the digital space and found that the infrastructure of digital space has been controlled by giants. For example, the US election and the political operation of the whole country actually have the influence of the Internet. For example, Facebook can make the US president "socially dead".
Wu Bofan: This is one of the reasons. In 2003, which was equivalent to the first year of e-commerce in China, the epidemic situation at that time forced people to go online at once. The epidemic situation in 2020 was much larger than that 17 years ago, and it was the worldwide epidemic that pushed up the potential of the Internet.
Second, the raw materials of the Internet are particularly single, namely 0 and 1. All industry boundaries are almost nonexistent for Internet companies. It can expand rapidly to other fields. Even if I haven't set foot today, I will become the boss when I enter the next day.
Wu Xiaobo: Antitrust was done 100 years ago, such as Rockefeller and Carnegie. But in fields like oil and steel, its resource boundary is relatively clear. Now, what is the biggest difficulty?
American Antitrust: Report on the Resolution of Standard Oil Company Fang Xingdong: The professional term is related market. How to define related market? Let's watch the 3Q war. At that time, there was also a choice between two. Then the two sides fought to the highest level, and finally ended up with nothing. Because Tencent does not have a monopoly position in the definition of relevant markets. China has been grappling with the issue of relevant markets for more than 10 years, and no one can make it clear.
Wu Xiaobo: Why was the choice of two not considered illegal 10 years ago?
Wu Bofan: The scale is not large enough. Moreover, monopoly does not directly lead to abuse of advantages. This is the perspective of onlookers. For the enterprise itself, it is to give full play to my advantages. Peter Thiel said that the highest level of business model is the pursuit of monopoly, which should be understood by everyone. Once an enterprise's advantages are formed, its huge body may trample others at any time.
In the past, there was a saying that "cross-border", but now Internet enterprises do not have cross-border problems, and they have set foot in many industries. So today, it is very impotent to use the traditional set of boundaries to define it.
two
The Difference between Chinese and Foreign Antitrust
Wu Xiaobo: What should we do now?
Wu Bofan: One way is to look at the effect of monopoly, no matter how you do it, whether you are effective or not. For example, looking at the market value, I remember that in the 2000 Internet bubble, if a company reached a market value of 500 billion yuan, it would be the largest company on the planet, but today there are many companies with a market value of trillion yuan.
Fang Xingdong: The answer from Europe has come out. It's called the gatekeeper system, which means that if an enterprise's users exceed 10% of the EU's population, it must comply with the 18 business standards I set for you. For example, on the WeChat platform, the user said that I would give this data to the headline, and WeChat cannot have any restrictions.
Wu Xiaobo: The American antitrust litigation is probably not as fast as our administrative efficiency. In the 1990s, Netscape sued Microsoft for several years, and when Netscape died, Microsoft was not recognized as a monopoly. What is the difference between the American anti-monopoly thinking and China's anti-monopoly approach today?
Microsoft and Netscape compete for the browser market Fang Xingdong: At the beginning of the judgment in 1999, Microsoft was actually supposed to be punished and split as a monopoly, but after the president changed, it was reconciled. Therefore, the antitrust lawsuit in the United States is both an economic issue and a political issue, which is very complicated.
It is also related to the economic situation of the whole country. How to stimulate the market vitality should be considered? Therefore, Europe, the United States, China and other regions rarely simultaneously fight against monopoly. The difference is that the time span of anti-monopoly litigation in the United States is large, and it usually lasts for five years. Our system has obvious advantages.
Wu Bofan: At the end of the antitrust campaign in the United States, the judgment is meaningless.
Fang Xingdong: However, from the beginning of the investigation, there was still a lot of public opinion pressure on enterprises. When you wanted to fight against Microsoft at the beginning, you explicitly said that you would split it. But after the fight, Google has risen, and Microsoft is no longer in a dominant position.
Wu Xiaobo: I wrote a case that Didi and Kuaidi merged to form a monopoly. But you can see that I now use Gaode Map and Baidu Map for taxis, so Didi's monopoly was broken, not because we imposed administrative sanctions.
Fang Xingdong: There is still a need to distinguish between monopoly and monopoly behavior. The current law mainly focuses on the behavior itself. For example, the main problem for Didi this time is that it is proportional.
Fang Xingdong Wu Bofan: Antitrust has two purposes. The first is not to allow one company to dominate and destroy the entire industrial ecology. The second is not to upset the balance between businesses and customers. If it is disordered, enterprises can set prices at will, and the final harm is consumer interests.
Fang Xingdong: The biggest problem of Didi is that taxi fares became cheaper in the competition, but now they are more expensive than before. The Anti monopoly Law should play a role.
three
The market is also a force of anti-monopoly
Wu Xiaobo: Do you think antitrust is solved through administrative means or through the market?
Fang Xingdong: We should do both, because after you monopolize the market, the competition will become invalid.
Wu Xiaobo: I started writing Tencent Biography in 2011. You see, before 2012, all platforms were interconnected. For example, Alipay can communicate with Weibo, Weibo and WeChat, and then WeChat and Baidu. Mutual shielding began in 2012. After the 3Q War, a barrier has formed between each other.
Wu Bofan: It's also very interesting. We used to say that we should avoid Baidu's dominance. However, with the advent of the App, Baidu has become an island and an internal search engine for Baijia.
What we mentioned just now is mainly the anti-monopoly of the government. I think the market can also be anti-monopoly. In 1996, many of us stood up against Microsoft. By 2006, a total of ten years, Microsoft's hegemony had disappeared and Google had risen. Therefore, we should not ignore the market, which does have an anti-monopoly power.
Fang Xingdong: Enterprise innovation is indeed a wave of anti-monopoly power. Once used to monopoly, there is no competitiveness. To some extent, if there is no anti-monopoly, enterprises like Microsoft will die slowly.
Wu Xiaobo: Antitrust will lead to innovative genes, really?
Fang Xingdong: The anti-monopoly in the United States has gone through four waves every 20 years. Each wave can release market vitality. For example, in the 1956 settlement agreement between AT&T and the Ministry of Justice, one of the terms was to open the patents of Bell Laboratories free of charge. Without that opening, Intel and other companies would not have been able to rise.
Bell Labs has given birth to a number of emerging companies after opening patents to American companies for free Wu Bofan: It is impossible for a monopoly company to change its own life, but there are several forces that can give it a blow. One is the government, the other is the power of technological innovation, and the other is the power to kill itself. These forces can make the monopoly unsustainable.
Wu Xiaobo: There is one question. Does the United States still have Internet hegemony over China?
Fang Xingdong: I think the trend is optimistic. At present, the Internet users in the United States account for only 6% of the world. At present, there are about 5 billion netizens in the world, with Asia accounting for half of 2.5 billion. The advantage of Chinese Internet companies is that they can be both high-end and low-end.
Moreover, after the development of TikTok, the whole Internet pattern is changing. I talked with a person who made short videos before. He said that we made short videos for 8000 people, including 5000 technicians. He said that this was impossible for Silicon Valley, and basically hanged those people in Silicon Valley.
Wu Bofan: There is also an e-commerce company SHEIN in Jiangsu that sells clothes. Its strength in e-commerce enterprises in the United States is second only to Amazon, ranking first in many countries.
four
The role of government
Wu Xiaobo: So, what role should the government play?
Wu Bofan: In the United States, it's mainly to frighten you, because a drag is five or eight years, and a technical cycle has passed.
Fang Xingdong: The core is deterrence. The biggest problem in China is that the Anti monopoly Law has not played a role in the Internet in the past 10 years, so everyone can be unscrupulous. Moreover, when we criticized them more than 10 years ago, they would listen carefully. It doesn't matter these years. Your criticism must be groundless? Or take the opponent's money to attack me? The whole cognitive system of enterprises has changed. The 18.2 billion yuan this time is the biggest role in prompting many Internet companies to set up antitrust compliance posts.
Wu Bofan: The measure of a company's success is whether it has set up a department specialized in compliance.
Wu Bofan Wu Xiaobo: The problem is that those compliance departments may know that today's behavior is compliant, but they do not know what will happen in the future.
Wu Bofan: The development of the Internet is characterized by the fact that people who make laws do not know what will happen. However, for enterprises, they should at least have a sense of awe. They don't know where the boundary is, but they should have a sense of boundary.
Fang Xingdong: Our principle of managing the Internet is to develop before managing, so there are many uncertainties. At that time, I didn't expect that there were many big fish in our pond. However, the regulatory authorities also have a great responsibility over the years, which has suddenly become the national anti-monopoly.
five
Antitrust is a process
Wu Xiaobo: I remember Fukuyama, an American scholar who wrote an article called How to Save Democracy from Large Technology Companies. He talked about government regulation and data privacy protection, but he thought that these are traditional methods that can not really fundamentally solve the potential threats of large companies. Are we a bit optimistic?
Fang Xingdong: His solution is to develop some middleware, which generally refers to software on the existing platform. Middleware allows users to choose how to plan and filter information for them, forming a check and balance power.
Wu Bofan: I think that promoting "biodiversity" may be a solution, but it is not diversified enough. In the future, I hope that there will be some independent technologies to mobilize these forces to form a relatively complete ecology. Now it's really not like that. There are no restrictions.
Wu Xiaobo: At what level is China's Internet antitrust?
From left to right: Fang Xingdong, Wu Xiaobo, Wu Bofan Fang Xingdong: The institutional level must be behind Europe and the United States. At present, Chinese enterprises have not really gone global. Only after the geopolitical baptism of various countries can Chinese enterprises know how to do compliance.
Wu Xiaobo: After talking for more than an hour, I have a summary. Antitrust real It is a process in the world. When the company has gradually exceeded its commercial capacity and formed its ability to challenge the country and even civilization, it will no longer be evaluated from a commercial perspective, but will be evaluated and guided from a higher dimension. It is possible to finally complete a terrorist balance, and it is also likely that a new technology will be iterated.
