Author
Assoc Prof Jingmeng Cai
Organisation/Institution
Beijing University of Chemical Technology, College of Arts and Law
Country
CHINA
Panel
Competition Law
Title
Ecosystem Merger in Digital Markets and China’s Antimonopoly Law
Abstract
An increasing number of mergers in the digital market show the features of forming digital ecosystems. The purpose of mergers is not to acquire assets with clearly defined specific commercial value, but to set up a digital ecosystem where sectors in that system adhere to certain standards, share facilities and data, and are interconnected and mutually influential with each other. The ecosystem exhibits strong economies of scale, network effects, complementarity, and self-learning effects. In recent years, a series of mergers exhibits the characteristics of building digital ecosystems, such as mergers of Booking/eTraveli, Microsoft/Activision Blizzard, Google/Fitbit, Huya/Douyu etc. The traditional antimonopoly law enforcers, however, encounter challenges and dilemmas when they apply the law to the ecosystem mergers. Conventional antimonopoly norms analyze market power from the perspective of product substitutability, but the “substitutability”-based analytical model often fails to accurately describe the competitive relationships between enterprises in an ecosystem-typed merger. Moreover, overemphasis on “market power” may lead to draw static and rigid assessment conclusions, which fail to capture the impact of a single merger on enterprises’ overall strategy and the impacts of competition between ecosystems. Therefore, as to ecosystem-typed merger review, it is necessary to rethink the role of relevant market definition, and shift the traditional effect-oriented assessment method to a cloud infrastructure-based method, stressing the overall assessment of a series of mergers and ex post evaluation for merger review decisions. This article includes three parts. The first part clarifies the definition of ecosystem mergers and analyzes the specialties that distinguish them from other merger types. The second part identifies challenges and problems when the traditional antimonopoly analytical approaches and enforcement pattern to the ecosystem mergers. The third part tries to offer possible solutions and raise theoretical and practical issues worthy of further discussion.
Biography
Jingmeng Cai is an Associate Professor at the Law and Literature Institute, Beijing University of Chemical Technology (BUCT). She received her S.J.D. (Ph.D. in Law) and LL.M. (Master of Law) from IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law in the United States, and her B.A. and LL.M. from China University of Political Science and Law. She has held internships at the US Federal Trade Commission and the United Nations, as well as work experience at an international law firm. Her scholarly research and teaching interests are primarily in the areas of antitrust/competition law and comparative law. She has published dozens of articles on competition law in renowned international and Chinese legal journals, and translated academic articles and books from English to Chinese. Her research project on China’s Fair Competition Review System has been supported by the Beijing Social Science Fund. In recent years, her research focus has been on antitrust law enforcement in the digital market. Additionally, her English monograph, China’s Anti-monopoly Law in the Digital Era: How China Tames the Digital Behemoth, has been published by Routledge (2025); and her translation of the book, Competition Law and Antitrust: A Global Guide (author David J. Gerber, Oxford University Press 2020), has been published by China’s leading publishing house (Commercial Press, 2025). Moreover, she has been invited to present her research at the 15th, 16th, 18th, 21st, and 22nd ASLI Annual Conferences.
