Fair competition: cornerstone for healthy development of China household appliance industry

On June 17, 2019, the eight departments including the State Administration for Market Regulation, National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Commerce, General Administration of Customs, Cyberspace Administration of China and State Post Bureau jointly issued the 2019 Special Action Plan (Wangjian Plan) for Market Regulation, which will be implemented between June and November. The plan explicitly mentions that “ we will investigate and punish e-commerce platform operators for their restriction of the participation of their users in business activities of other third-party e-commerce platforms in accordance with the law”. China Household Electrical Appliances Association, as the industry organization of manufacturing enterprises in this field, would like to give its sincere strong support to the plan.

In recent years, the association has actually organized enterprises to discuss issues like “ the impact of channel change on the industry” in the internal board and standing board according to the opinions of its members. After many rounds of exchanges, a consensus is basically formed among enterprises: on the one hand, we must actively embrace the e-commerce platform, and rationally allocate resources under the guidance of technological trends of networking, big data and artificial intelligence, to meet the demand of new network consumption. On the other hand, some platforms abuse their power to raise unreasonable requests to enterprises and sellers, contributing to worse unfair market competition. If left unattended, it will finally bite this industry and impair consumer interests.

Based on the above consensus, the association calls on all upstream and downstream enterprises to strictly regulate themselves, abide by national laws and regulations, and consciously maintain the hard-won domestic consumer market. As we all know, this industry has become one of the most market-oriented industries in China after more than 40 years of development. With the accumulation of Chinese enterprises in brand, technology, market, and internationalization, the industry has initially acquired international competitiveness and is in a critical period of a substantive leap from being big to strong. Meanwhile, fair competition is a necessary condition for the healthy development of the industry. The appliance manufacturing industry has been open to the emerging e-commerce platform in the last decade and is willing to cooperate comprehensively for common innovation and development. However, as for the monopoly of some platforms, the industry cannot compromise and must oppose it clearly because we know monopoly will eventually block innovation, inducing the loss of the core competitiveness formed through the efforts of more than 40 years. Without manufacturing as a cornerstone, current prosperous e-commerce platforms will turn into castles in the air, and Chinese consumers have no possibility to deploy truly quality appliances.

We call on e-commerce platforms, large distributors and manufacturers to resolutely implement the provisions of E-commerce Law, Anti-unfair Competition Law and Anti-monopoly Law, firmly oppose the abuse of dominance by e-commerce platforms to force enterprises and all kinds of merchants to choose sides. It is also hoped that the market regulators will resolvedly investigate and punish e-commerce platform operators for their restriction of the participation of their users in business activities of other third-party e-commerce platforms in accordance with the law.

Main Information of the AWE2020

Time: March 11-14, 2020

Address: Shanghai New International Expo Center (SNIEC)

Pavilions:：W1-W5，N1-N5，E1-E3

Contact:

China Household Electrical Appliances Association

TEL: +86 10 6709 3609

FAX: 010-67156913

E-mail: awe@cheaa.com

WEB: www.awe.com.cn