Legal Regulations of E-commerce in China: Focusing on the Anti-Monopoly Law, the Anti-Unfair Competition Law and the E-Commerce Law

In China, e-commerce transactions, represented by those done through Alibaba-run e-commerce shopping malls such as Taobao and T-mall, have been developing rapidly. In addition, taking advantage of the proliferation of smart phone payment services which have developed faster than in Japan, a variety of new information technology-related businesses have been introduced into markets, such as ride sharing, bike sharing, internet food delivery and so on. At present, most of such new entrants have been integrated, through capital and other relationships, into either one of Alibaba group, which runs Taobao, T-mall ad Alipay, or Tencent Group, which runs Wechat and Wechat Pay, which together constitute the two largest IT conglomerates. By demonstrating the contrast between the current trends in Japan, the United States and the European Union towards more and more stringent antimonopoly/competition laws regulation of IT giants such as Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, this discussion paper introduces legal regulations, especially regulations through China's Anti-Monopoly Law, Anti-Unfair Competition Law and E-Commerce Law, of Chinese IT giants and their characteristics and limitations. This paper also examines what lessons we can learn for corresponding regulations in other jurisdictions and development of international rules.