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  4. Vol 4, Issue 4, 2025

Antitrust Regulatory Pathways for "The Lowest Price Clauses" in China's E-Commerce Economy

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DOI: 10.23977/law.2025.040415 | Downloads: 3 | Views: 162

Author(s)

Yujin Ma 1

Affiliation(s)

1 Xi'an Jiaotong University, Shaanxi, Xi'an, 710049, China

Corresponding Author

Yujin Ma

ABSTRACT

In the context of China's rapidly developing e-commerce economy, live-streaming commerce has become a central segment of the platform economy. Leading influencers, capitalizing on their traffic advantages and bargaining power, lock in prices across various platforms using "lowest price" clauses. While superficially offering discounts, these clauses actually embed a Price-Most-Favored-Nation (PMFN) clause under an agency-like appearance, thereby solidifying market structures and eroding consumer autonomy. These clauses obstruct vertical price competition, raise horizontal entry barriers, and lead to a "commission-price" upward spiral, solidifying an oligopolistic market structure. At the same time, emotional manipulation and information asymmetry weaken consumers' ability to make rational choices. The current legal frameworks—monopoly agreements and abuse of market dominance—are inadequate due to exceptions for agents, delayed market definition, and rigid subject recognition. This paper proposes piercing through the formal agency relationships to use the "substantial control" standard to identify the independence of influencers, introduces the theory of joint market dominance, and complements this with price transparency and algorithm audit obligations, thereby enabling ex-ante intervention and competition-effect-driven dynamic regulation.

KEYWORDS

Platform Economy; the Lowest Price Clauses PMFN Clause; Antitrust Law; Comparative Economic Law

CITE THIS PAPER

Yujin Ma. Antitrust Regulatory Pathways for "The Lowest Price Clauses" in China's E-Commerce Economy. Science of Law Journal (2025) Vol. 4: 96-100. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/DOI: 10.23977/law.2025.040415.

REFERENCES

[1] Funta, R. (2016) Admissibility of the Most Favoured Clauses (MFNs) on Booking Platforms in Competition Law. Krytyka Prawa. Independent Studies and Law, (04), 40-47.
[2] Jiao, H. (2021) The Application of Antitrust Law to the Most Favoured Nation Clauses on Internet Platforms. Commercial Economics and Management, (05), 72-84.
[3] Weiner, M. L., Falls, C. G. (2014) Counseling on MFNs after E-books. Antitrust, (03), 68-74.
[4] Akerlof, G., Shiller, R. (2016) Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception. CITIC Press, 22-23.
[5] Tan, C. (2020) Antitrust Regulation of Most Favoured Nation Clauses in the Internet Platform Economy. Journal of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, 22(2), 118-152.
[6] 2.2% of Top Streamers "Monopolize" Nearly 80% of Sales Share, Clear 80/20 Trend in Live Streaming E-Commerce. (2021-03-15). Retrieved from https://www.nbd.com.cn/articles/2021-03-15/1655863.html.

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