By Zhang Wenkui, Enterprise Research Institute, DRC

Research Report, No.348, 2021 (Total 6413) 2021-11-22

Abstract: The competition arena of Internet platform is mainly featured by easy access to capital, that is, the new round of capital subsidizes enterprises with huge amount of money to seize market share and elbow out their competitors by way of capital’s injection into enterprises. As a result, the assessed market value of competitive enterprises soars, giving the investors the opportunity to exit after the marketing of initial public offerings of enterprises. In this context, if the scenario is viewed from the perspective of capital inflow, the changing subsidies, enterprises’ merger and acquisition and the withdraw of entities, it would be easier to understand competition and monopoly in the arena of Internet platform and to judge  whether it is necessary for interventions by anti-monopoly and relevant anti-unfair competition policy measures compared with seeing the scenario from the stance of market structure, enterprisers’ market dominance, “one out of two”, deal refusal, and directional behaviors based on big data and algorithm. In this regard, this paper notes that the policy intervention is needed if there are sequential fund-raising, huge amount of subsidies, the vanishing of major market entities, consecutive mergers and acquisitions, inflation of prices and other clues that significantly raise the market entrance barriers.

Keywords: Internet platform, capital, competition, monopoly