Alibaba Group Case and Antitrust Regulation of E-commerce Platforms: China’s Experience

Abstract

In recent years, e-commerce platforms have been growing rapidly. It stresses necessity to introduce Russian antimonopoly legislation that takes into account the peculiarities of the digital economy. Due to the fact that China is one of the world leaders in the field of e-commerce, this paper discusses the Antimonopoly Guidelines for Platform Economy of the PRC adopted in 2021. The authors analyze the practice of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce on the example of the Alibaba Group case, and identify signs indicating the dominant position of the e-commerce platform: the financial and technological capabilities of the platform, the number of sellers and consumers registered on it, the ability of the platform to collect and analyze data about users, transactions, logistics, payments. Based on the conducted comparative legal research, authors introduced recommendations for amending Russian legislation.