Interconnection and then focus on deputies and members suggested that the field of intelligent Mini Programs should be "tried first"

For the first time, the field of intelligent mini programs has attracted the attention of the deputies and members of the two sessions.

Following the proposal of "vigorously promoting anti-monopoly in the Internet industry" submitted by the two sessions last year, Wu Jiezhuang, member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and chairman of the board of directors of Gao Feng Group, once again submitted a proposal on strengthening the supervision of the field of intelligent mini programs and promoting anti-monopoly and anti-unfair competition in subdivided industries.

In the proposal, Wu Jiezhuang pointed out that some large platforms control their own intelligent mini programs, acting as both contestants and referees, and it is not uncommon to suppress competitors and stifle innovation.

Wu Jiezhuang suggested that we should quickly take the lead in carrying out anti-monopoly and anti-unfair competition regulatory measures in this field of "early development stage, low technical difficulty, and fast development speed", and strive to create an "interconnection" model in the field of intelligent mini programs.

Li Xiaoxuan, a deputy to the National People's Congress and chairman of the China New Higher Education Group, also submitted a similar plan: a proposal to promote interconnection in the field of Internet mini programs.

Li Xiaoxuan clearly pointed out a variety of industry chaos in the bill, such as a platform restricting the update iteration of Taocai Cai Mini Program for nearly a year.

Since the WeChat internal beta intelligent mini program in 2017, the mini program has flourished with its characteristics of "running out and leaving" and "universality" in various scenarios of the mobile Internet.

More importantly, intelligent mini programs have brought "revolutionary" changes to small and medium-sized enterprises to touch the network, transformation and upgrading, which has greatly encouraged entrepreneurship and innovation; it has brought great convenience and equal choice to consumers.

Focus on the Mini Program platform

Since the outbreak of the new crown virus epidemic, China has achieved a huge victory in the fight against the epidemic with the strategy of "dynamic clearance", which has attracted the attention of the world.

In the process of fighting the epidemic, the health code on the technical side is indispensable. According to incomplete data, health codes have reached tens of billions of opens and applications since their launch.

But there are also news of health code crashes from time to time. Recently, the health code system in Xi'an, Guangzhou, Beijing, Tianjin, Suzhou and other places has failed, which also shows that the operation and management level of the health code system needs to be improved.

Miao Wei, deputy director of the Economic Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and former minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said in the proposal of the two sessions that in order to better serve epidemic prevention, facilitate the use of the masses, and promote the construction of digital government, we should accelerate the integration and interoperability of the national health code system, study the use of big data to calculate energy, and let the masses "non-essential and not bright code".

"In the past two years, the health code has played an important role in the prevention and control of the epidemic in the country, and has also become one of the most commonly used network applications for the people." Miao Wei fully affirmed the role and significance of the health code, saying that its application frequency, large number of visits, and wide coverage of the population have never been seen in the history of government affairs informatization in the mainland.

Cai Weiping, deputy to the National People's Congress and chief expert of the Infection Disease Center of the Eighth Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, deputy to the National People's Congress and Beijing Municipal Science and Technology

Seven or eight deputies and members, including Yi Tong, director of the Institute of Innovation and Development Strategy of the Research Institute, submitted similar proposals or proposals: to achieve national mutual recognition of health codes and establish a national health code platform.

The health codes targeted in these representatives, committee proposals or proposals are actually a digital government application of smart mini programs, but the health codes in various places run on different smart mini program platforms such as WeChat, Alipay, Baidu, and ByteDance, and it is precisely because these different platforms are not "interconnected" between them, so the problems raised by the above representatives and members have emerged.

From the case of the health code, it can also be seen that the intelligent mini program technology has a deep and wide impact on the current production and life of people.

However, even in the context of the "mandatory" interconnection of health codes, there are still many "island" problems, which fully explains the necessity of anti-monopoly and anti-unfair competition in the field of smart mini programs, and the urgency of taking the lead in achieving interconnection.

Member Wu Jiezhuang said in the proposal that some platform-based mini program enterprises have taken control of their own intelligent mini programs, acting as both referees and participants, and it is not uncommon to suppress competitors and stifle innovation.

Representative Li Xiaoxuan even gave an example that a platform restricted other companies from developing similar businesses by delaying audits and restricting updates and other improper "card neck" methods through intelligent Mini Programs of other companies.

For example, a platform restricts the update iteration of the Taocai Cai Mini Program for up to one year.

The reporter verified that at present, the update date of the Same Type of Meituan Preferred and Duoduo Buy Vegetables and other Mini Programs of the same type as TaocaiCai on the WeChat Mini Program platform is displayed as "within one week", while the page information of the Taocai Cai Mini Program shows that the update time of the Mini Program is "11 months ago".

At the end of last year, Taocaicai issued an announcement that due to encountering "barriers to interconnection", Taocaicai decided to suspend Guizhou services.

Compared with the problem of not being able to update taocai for a long time, Feishu documents are facing the dilemma of being "prohibited from entering", and in early 2021, Xie Xin, vice president of ByteDance, publicly "bombarded" the review of WeChat Mini Programs: Feishu Document Mini Programs have been stuck in the review process for nearly two months.

When the reporter searched for the "Feishu Document" Mini Program on WeChat, the WeChat page was displayed as "No more search results".

2021, recognized by the Internet industry as the "year of the substantive opening of China's Internet anti-monopoly" and "year of interconnection": from the release of the Anti-Monopoly Guidelines of the Anti-Monopoly Committee of the State Council on the Platform Economy on February 7, to the Solicitation of Opinions on the Provisions on the Prohibition of Online Unfair Competition (Draft for Public Comment) on August 17, and then to the interpretation of the Supreme People's Court on Several Issues Concerning the Application of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law of the People's Republic of China (Draft for Solicitation of Comments) on August 18 ...... A series of measures have established rules for fair competition on the Internet, drawn a bottom line, and set up "traffic lights".

"After interconnection, traffic may not be the most commercially valuable thing, and featured services and featured applications may be the first choice of network users," said Li Xinshe, deputy director of the Cyber Security Industry Development Center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. In the process of interconnection, it is necessary to classify data hierarchically, confirm the rights of data assets, and create new network value while protecting the interests of Internet enterprises.

Li Xinshe's opinion is aimed at the interconnection between Internet master platforms with a 20-year history, technical complexity, data security issues and complex interests.

It is precisely because Deputy Li Xiaoxuan and Member Wu Jiezhuang saw the "grandeur" of the interconnection of these main platforms that they proposed that regulatory departments such as the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Central Cyberspace Administration of China effectively promote and strengthen anti-monopoly and anti-unfair competition regulatory measures in the field of intelligent mini programs, and create a model of interconnection.

"Crazy" applets

The information on the official website of WeChat Mini Program shows that Mini Program is a new open capability, developers can quickly develop a Mini Program, and Mini Program can be more conveniently obtained and disseminated, while having an excellent experience of use.

Through its "run out and go" characteristics, intelligent Mini Programs have greatly satisfied the convenience and choice of online consumers, and have also greatly stimulated the entrepreneurial and innovative momentum of entrepreneurs, and have quickly become one of the most influential Internet "micro-innovation" formats in recent years.

It is based on this that WeChat launched the WeChat Mini Program and was awarded the "" award,

At present, including Tencent, Baidu, Ali, ByteDance and other leading Internet companies have laid out their own Mini Program ecology.

According to the "2021 White Paper on the Internet Development of Mini Programs" released by the Aladdin Research Institute at the beginning of this year, the number of Mini Programs on the whole network has exceeded 7 million in 2021.

According to the "Operation of the Internet and Related Service Industries from January to November 2021" released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, as of the end of November 2021, the number of apps monitored in the domestic market was 2.72 million.

This means that the intelligent mini programs that have only developed for a few short years have far exceeded the number of domestic apps in terms of quantity and other dimensions. More importantly, compared with the shrinking of apps, mini programs are growing vigorously.

"I think every e-commerce company should do small programs," said Huang Zheng, founder of Pinduoduo.

"Every business should have its own mini program!" Zhang Yiming, founder of ByteDance, is even more bold.

Smart Mini Programs not only make network users "cooler", more importantly, for small and medium-sized enterprises, it is difficult to create their own Apps to achieve network access and transformation and upgrading, and through relatively simple and practical smart Mini Programs, they can use this network tool very easily, and they themselves can focus on creating core competitiveness such as products and services.

It is precisely for this reason that the largest number of participants in the current smart Mini Program is small and medium-sized micro enterprises, and the smart Mini Program also quickly covers the "sinking market" of the third and fourth lines and even rural people.

To a large extent, smart mini programs have greatly improved the level of the Internet throughout China, and this technology has also greatly helped the development of productivity.

It is an emerging field, but it is a revolutionary step.

But on the other hand, the wind and rain are obscure, and the mud and sand are falling.

There are also problems associated with achievements, and many problems in the field of intelligent mini programs have been seriously exposed.

Member Wu Jiezhuang proposed that some small program platforms do both referees and participants, and that "relatives support and competitors press" is only the tip of the iceberg in this field.

According to the analysis of industry insiders, because the development stage is still early, the field of intelligent mini programs is almost nothing in the dimensions of industry standards and norms; even the norms of platform enterprises are useless, and there are a large number of "manual intervention" problems; in the anti-monopoly and anti-unfair competition supervision, intelligent mini programs are in a state of "virgin land" of barbaric growth.

Such a status quo is obviously contrary to the background of the interconnection policy, and the adverse effects of these problems are also rapidly emerging.

The practical significance of "taking the lead"

In the same way as the deputies and committee members who proposed to promote the "interconnection" of health codes, Deputy Li Xiaoxuan and member Wu Jiezhuang suggested that we should "take the lead" in promoting anti-monopoly and anti-unfair competition regulatory measures in the field of intelligent mini programs, and should "take the lead" in making this field a typical case and model for the comprehensive interconnection of the Internet.

Because the field of intelligent Mini Programs has "early development stage, low technical difficulty, and fast development speed", it is of practical and accurate significance to take the lead in promoting interconnection and interaction in this emerging field.

Member Wu Jiezhuang suggested that at present, the external environment facing China's economy is becoming more complex, severe, and uncertain, and that in the policy regulation and control of the internal environment, it is necessary to emphasize more on fair competition, strengthen the spirit of contract, and stimulate the vitality of market players.

The first is to promote the construction of an open source ecosystem for the code of Mini Program projects and promote the interconnection and interoperability of Mini Program content with other platform content; the second is to respond to the spirit of central policies and social needs through typical anti-monopoly cases in the field of Mini Programs; the third is to explore anti-monopoly jurisdiction and transfer jurisdiction to avoid judicial local protectionism.

Member Wu Jiezhuang also reminded that in the anti-monopoly and unfair competition of intelligent mini programs, it is also necessary to fully protect the security of personal information. He called for a severe crackdown on personal information violations and crimes, optimization of the overall strategic planning of the big data industry, and the introduction of relevant laws and regulations to prohibit malicious competition between enterprises in the development of big data, including malicious data unfair competition, illegal acquisition of data and other illegal acts.

In an interview with the media, member Wu Jiezhuang believed that compared with the interconnection between the Internet master platforms that must be implemented in stages and steps in the objective dimensions of technology, data and interests, the field of intelligent mini programs can be tried first.

On January 17, 2022, Baidu, together with Meituan, Xiaohongshu, SF, Ctrip, Zhihu, Tongcheng, Maoyan and 58 more than ten enterprises in the same city, announced the opening of in-depth cooperation on interconnection at the three levels of traffic, technology and service ecology, which together launched the "first shot" of Interconnection in the Internet industry in 2022, which is also the positive response of many Internet companies led by Baidu to the interconnection action.

At the same time, we also see that on the WeChat side, we can already open Taobao links and Douyin videos, which are gratifying changes under the great policy of interconnection.

But this is far from the "full interconnection" of the Internet.

"Connectivity involves layering issues", said Han Wei, executive director of the Competition Law Research Center of the University of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, drawing on the industry's hierarchical thinking on cloud computing service models, at least it can be roughly divided into IaaS (infrastructure as a service), PaaS (platform as a service), SaaS (software as a service), DaaS (data as a service) several different levels. At the same time, connectivity should also be differentiated in the application of infrastructure, platforms, software, data and other levels.

"The current interconnection must first solve the problem at the institutional level, that is, how to do the supervision, principles and methods of the industry field to market supervision", Chen Bing, professor of the Law School of Nankai University and director of the Competition Law Research Center, believes that the discussion on interconnection should be based on the development of the industry or industry. In this regard, the positioning, goals and directions of connectivity are clear: the first is security, the second is to promote innovation for small and medium-sized enterprises, and the third is to facilitate consumers.

"How to integrate the interconnection under the co-ordination of the industry and the market with the operator's right to operate freely?" Chen Bing said that this is a theoretical point of contention and a practical difficulty in the process of realizing interconnection.

Obviously, the opinions of these experts are very consistent with the suggestions of the deputies and committee members, and this is also an important reason why the proposals of Deputies Li Xiaoxuan and Wu Jiezhuang have received positive responses from society.

In 2019, connectivity began to appear frequently in government guidance documents. By 2021, the "Year of Anti-monopoly Supervision" has arrived, interconnection has been elevated to a higher dimension, and more platforms have begun to break the "barriers" between data and platforms, taking an important step towards interconnection, this year, also known as the "substantive first year" of interconnection.

Obviously, the picture of the Internet being fully interconnected is very beautiful, but to achieve this grand goal, it takes not only determination and perseverance, but also wisdom and methods.