The era of China's Internet platform giants taking the neighbor as a neighbor must end, and interconnection should be promoted as soon as possible
Wen | Caijing reporter Xie Lirong
Among the many changes that are taking place in China's Internet economy, the most prominent is the progress of interconnection between Internet platforms. After the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology recently proposed a special action to systematically solve the interconnection between platform economies, according to the latest regulatory requirements, various large platform enterprises have implemented measures to remove malicious shielding and promote interconnection to varying degrees.
China's Internet platform economy is developing rapidly, but at the same time new problems continue to emerge, some new problems can be solved through technology, some new problems can be solved through management, and some new problems need to be solved through various aspects of the system and linkage. The issue of interconnection between platform economies belongs to the third situation.
Recently, at the expert seminar of the 223rd Digital Forum with the theme of "Connectivity" (a regular event organized by experts and scholars in various fields in 1998 to enlighten, advocate and promote China's Internet culture), including Fang Xingdong, chief expert of the Institute of Social Governance of Zhejiang University, Zhu Yu, vice president and secretary general of the China Information Association, Zhai Wei, associate professor of the School of Economic Law of East China University of Political Science and Law, and "Yangtze River Scholars" Distinguished Professor of the Ministry of Education, executive director of the Institute of Competition Law of Chinese Min University. Yang Dong, executive director of the Blockchain Research Institute, and 15 other experts and scholars from different fields expressed their opinions and discussed the strategic significance of the current economic interconnection of China's Internet platform, the proposal for landing, and the relationship between openness and security.
They reached a number of points of consensus.
First, the Internet platform belongs to a new type of infrastructure, and the interconnection between platforms is the general trend, which is an important phased measure related to the development of China's future digital economy;
Second, the work of interconnection needs to be carried out step by step when the specific practice is implemented to prevent new problems brought about by platform interconnection, but it needs a unified planning and standard, resolutely implemented, and avoid floating on the surface;
Third, unblocking url links is only the first step in interconnection, and there are still many deep-seated problems in interconnection, which should be gradually solved and liberalized.
Finally, we must not seek security in a closed system, but in an open system. Only connectivity can help network security and create a new stage of network security.
How to ensure that the interconnection between Internet platforms is smoothly implemented, and new problems such as data security are fully avoided? Platform economic interconnection has brought new propositions to supervision and new development opportunities for the development of the entire digital society.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="23" > strategic significance</h1>
How exactly do you define the social attributes of the Internet platform economy? To achieve the interconnection of Internet platforms, what is the demolition?
Fang Xingdong, chief expert of the Institute of Social Governance of Zhejiang University, traced the history of telegraph and telecommunications network interconnection in the development of mankind, although the Internet was invented in the 60s of the last century, but commercialization was a matter of the 90s, and only in the 21st century began to appear a large number of platforms in the world, becoming a "walled garden" phenomenon, at this time, the United States and Europe and other countries began to introduce various legal systems to regulate these super platforms, regarding them as "critical infrastructure".
Therefore, unlike the telegraph and telephone networks that were interconnected at the beginning, the interconnection of the Internet is a major legacy problem of global network governance.
Since this is a global problem, why should China solve this problem at this time? Zhu Yu, vice president and secretary general of the China Information Association, explained that China's integrated infrastructure has led the world and has formed a considerable scale, reaching a stage of development that requires interconnection.
For example, he said, Internet platforms such as WeChat and Meituan can be regarded as the integration infrastructure of society, and these platforms not only belong to enterprises, but also belong to the whole society. As a new growth driver, integrated infrastructure must first emphasize social attributes, reflect social responsibility, and achieve digital inclusion.
Zhai Wei, an associate professor at the School of Economics and Law at East China University of Political Science and Law, expressed a similar view to Zhu Yu. He said that large Internet platforms have certain public attributes and cannot be regarded as private gardens. Most Internet platform companies have data, and the data generated by their own platforms is very small, the vast majority of which is provided by social users, and they are still making full use of this data.
From the perspective of fair competition, lifting the platform ban to achieve interconnection can urge large platform enterprises to abandon the monopoly model of monopolizing the "traffic pool" and form a pattern of fair and orderly competition among large platform enterprises, so as to maximize the positive effect of the platform economy.
In addition to the social attributes of Internet platforms and data source factors determine the importance of interconnection, Dr. Zhong Xiangming, assistant dean of the Internet and Social Research Institute of Zhejiang University of Communications, concluded from the perspective of China's competitiveness in the longer term that under the background of geopolitical rise, China needs to attach great importance to global undertakings and values, and the competition between China and the United States and Europe, in addition to economic competition, institutional innovation competition will also become a very important dimension in the future. The essence of the "walled garden" is to use the power of monopoly, rather than to protect its own interests by strengthening technological innovation.
Therefore, in the future, if the Chinese Internet wants to lead the world, it must return to the main channel of innovation, and through effective governance, to dissolve and inhibit the "walled garden", so that it has less and less room for survival. This is the only way for China's Internet to go global.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="119" > implementation guidelines that require a hammer.com</h1>
According to the planning of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the problem of open website links between platforms will be solved step by step and in stages with Internet security as the bottom line.
Zhu Yu believes that this implementation step is reasonable. He said that in view of the current conditions and levels in all aspects, the problem of unblocking url links has been carried out in stages to give the regulatory departments and the relevant departments of internet agencies the time and space to explore and repair, and can be gradually adjusted according to the problems that arise in time.
From the perspective of the head Internet enterprise, after all, before, many of the two sides that need to communicate with each other are confrontational relationships, how to transition to a cooperative relationship, which should have an interconnected standard and standard, which plays a balancing role in many interests such as platforms, merchants, and users.
The establishment of this standard or standard must be based on the assessment of the main body of the whole country and industry, and it is a feasible document.
"This tests the regulatory wisdom of the government." He said.
Wang Chunhui, a member of the Information and Communications Economic Expert Committee of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, participated in the interconnection between China Telecom and China Unicom in 2003. He recalled that the two major telecom operators went through four stages of open interconnection.
In the first stage, resolutely not to connect, no matter how many documents were written, resolutely not to connect, and later the regulatory authorities introduced a punishment and coercion mechanism to solve this problem;
In the second stage, the connection is not connected, the network is connected, but it does not work;
The third stage, through but not smooth, one moment through, one moment not;
The fourth stage, smooth and soon, because you are not smooth, the regulatory authorities have to go to spot checks, and once the inspection is smooth, the people are not smooth again.
Wang Chunhui said that this was the pain at the beginning of the historical trend of telecommunications network interconnection, but after the pain, it eventually developed to complete interconnection.
Drawing on this history, Wang Chunhui proposed that Internet platforms should conform to the general trend and obey administrative orders; regulatory authorities should introduce administrative control measures to assist in interconnection policies.
In addition, similar to Zhu Yu's point of view, Wang Chunhui also proposed that the relevant decision-making departments of the state should preferably introduce an overall standard, and under the guidance of the standard, let everyone slowly go from resolutely not connecting, connecting and not connecting, passing through and not smooth, smooth and soon, and finally reaching interconnection.
Professor Du Chuang, director of microeconomics research at the Institute of Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and a professor and doctoral supervisor at the University of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that from the perspective of incentives, allowing these dominant platforms to charge a certain access fee in the process of opening up is a reasonable choice. In fact, it is also a common practice in many industries with the nature of the network, and we have the cost of network supervision in the process of telecommunications interconnection, including the bank's network supervision settlement is also a certain fee.
He said that how to set the fee, which may be something that regulators can help to do, depends entirely on negotiations between enterprises, and may not be able to become an efficient price. Whether it is direct price regulation, or whether I regulate an upper and lower limit, or whether the regulator acts as a centered institution to facilitate negotiations between the two sides, these are all ways that can be studied, and even economists can play a greater role in this.
Through the optimal access cost design, it not only ensures the connectivity between competitive Internet platforms, but also promotes the interests of consumers. At the same time, it can maximize the protection of the innovation incentives of these platforms.
Zhong Xiangming believes that the sense of social responsibility of enterprises is the first weapon to break the "walled garden", and the second weapon is to determine the regulation of competition in some industries through industry associations, to clarify the norms of some industries, and ultimately it is still necessary to build a perfect law mechanism.
He said that from the obstacles of the "walled garden" of large Internet platforms around the world, the existing legal system still lacks a one-size-fits-all solution, and there is no institutional innovation and breakthrough, and this situation will continue to exist for a long time.
The most effective way to solve the problem of "walled gardens" is to refer to the Digital Market Law issued by the European Union to ensure the fairness and expansion of data and markets by defining "gatekeepers", the behaviors carried out in the daily application process, and avoiding some unfair prohibitive obligations.
This round of anti-monopoly waves set off by China, the United States and Europe at the same time means that some traditional legal tools such as the Anti-Monopoly Law and the Anti-Unfair Competition Law have fallen into difficulties in the past, and it also shows that the Digital Market Law has pointed out a new direction for countries.
The direction has been very clear, a number of participating experts reminded that the next step of the regulatory authorities can consider giving a clear step, stage and timetable, under the premise of clear rules, to ensure that enterprises respond in a timely manner, regulatory penalties to keep up, so that it is conducive to the smooth and effective promotion of interconnection work.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="120" > find a sense of security in openness</h1>
After the announcement of the special action on the interconnection of Internet platforms, the most questioned in the society is whether the complete opening of interconnection will bring more severe data security problems. Some people believe that security first should not be liberalized.
Fang Xingdong's view is that from a technical point of view, there is no need to worry too much about security.
Because, from the very beginning, the Internet, for example, was the most famous dispute between the TCP/IP protocol and the OSI protocol. The OSI agreement is led by international organizations, with the participation of large companies, recognized by governments, and is very strictly regulated from the top down, taking into account security and also considering commerce. But in the end, PK was done between the two protocols, and in the end, the TCP/IP protocol won a big victory. And the main reason why everyone looks down on TCP is that it is unreliable, the transmission is often lost, it is not controllable, it cannot collect money, and it is not safe. But why such a "guerrilla" protocol will succeed, because it is in line with the development of the Internet, the underlying logic of the Internet is how an open system builds security.
Therefore, Fang Xingdong believes that we can no longer return to a closed system to seek security, we must seek security in an open state.
Lu Benfu, director of the Research Center for Network Economics and Knowledge Management at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, also focused on this issue. He said that in a relatively closed ecology, for internet platforms, it is obviously easier to ensure security, and in an open and interconnected environment, it is obvious that more technical preparations need to be made to do a good job of security.
However, he stressed that the two things of open interoperability and security are not "either/or", because there is a network security strategy in an open environment and a closed network security strategy in a closed environment.
For example, if a lot of links are opened on the WeChat platform and a lot of advertisements are placed, what should I do, will it disturb users? At this point, the problem can give the choice to the user, the specific way is that the platform operator can have several options, let the user choose whether to receive the commercial link, the choice should be given to the user.
In terms of network security, the platform can divide network security into several levels, absolutely insecure, shielded; safe, but commercial, prompting the user, giving the choice to the user, returning to the consumer.
Zhu Yu mentioned that the security capabilities and awareness of the head Internet platform and smes are different. He said that the head Internet platform enterprises have accumulated technical strength and management experience, and they have the ability to escort the Internet environment after the open link.
However, Zhu Yu stressed that even if the head Internet company has higher security capabilities, the communication mechanism is indispensable. For the platform, before the platform interconnection, the necessary firewall should be established, at least more communication mechanisms should be established between the platform and the platform to deal with the problems caused by the sharing of platform links, especially security issues.
He also stressed that the links shared by large platforms are basically guaranteed. But the influx of links to some SMEs will have a big data risk problem. A business is drained by several platforms, and each platform also shares certain benefits. Who is ultimately responsible for the security problems that arise are all problems that will be faced and solved after interconnection.
In response to this problem, a feasible solution given by Zhai Wei is that after fully entering the state of interconnection, major Internet platforms should unify the standards of security supervision, unify the identification and processing regulatory mechanisms for illegal external links, and establish relevant regulatory information sharing mechanisms to prevent some illegal external links from infringing on the competition order of platforms and infringing on the social public interest.
From breaking the portal to seeing each other embrace each other, the interconnection of China's Internet platforms takes time to adapt and run in. However, under the correct guidance of the policy, it can be predicted that with the lifting of shielding and the interconnection of platforms, the development of China's Internet will inevitably usher in a new era and embrace a new pattern. The breaking down of barriers between platforms will also mean more convenient and better experiences for more than one billion users in China.
The interconnection of China's Internet is also a key step for the Internet to bid farewell to platform monopoly and move towards ecological openness, which is of great milestone significance in China's digital history.