On August 2nd, the State Administration for Market Regulation (hereinafter referred to as the "State Administration for Market Regulation") issued a notice stating that on July 31st, the State Administration for Market Regulation issued and implemented the "Compliance Guidelines for Charging Behaviors of Online Trading Platforms" (hereinafter referred to as the "Guidelines"), further regulating the charging behaviors of online trading platforms to operators within the platform, such as commissions, commissions, membership fees, technical service fees, information service fees, marketing promotion fees, etc. In recent years, the role of China's platform economy in promoting consumption and innovation has become increasingly prominent. Standardizing the behavior of platform enterprises and promoting the healthy and sustainable development of the platform economy has become a key focus of policy attention. With the release of the "Guidelines", China's platform economy regulatory policy system has been further improved. The interviewed experts generally believe that the "Guidelines" can help maintain a fair competition order in the market, optimize the platform economy ecology, and inject new impetus into its high-quality development by regulating platform fee behavior. At present, the development of China's platform economy involves tens of millions of online business entities, numerous flexible employees, and over 900 million online consumers. The platform economy empowers various industries in the real economy and has become an ecological system with wide coverage, strong inclusiveness, and high openness. In the process of conducting business services for platform enterprises, commissions, commissions, technical service fees, and other expenses constitute the basic source of their income. In recent years, platform enterprises have gradually improved their compliance management mechanisms during their development, but there is still room for improvement in terms of fee behavior norms. Song Xiangqing, Vice President of the Chinese Society of Business Economics and founder of Huadebang, stated in an interview with Securities Daily that some platforms often use traffic support as bait to force merchants to purchase promotional services. If merchants on the platform are required to participate in the "full reduction activity", otherwise their search rankings will be lowered, which is essentially forcing merchants to pay for promotion. In addition, some platforms also have phenomena such as data monopoly and alienation of basic service fees. From the perspective of the relationship between the platform and merchants, the most prominent issue is the abuse of pricing power. Some platforms, relying on their traffic advantage, unilaterally establish charging rules, and merchants within the platform lack bargaining power. ”During an interview with Securities Daily, Zhu Keli, the founding director of the National Research Institute for New Economy, stated that some platforms have hidden real costs through complex charging rules, "only charging without service" or "charging more for less service", which not only damages the interests of merchants but also undermines the fairness of the platform ecosystem and hinders the healthy development of the platform economy. In response to the problems of various fee categories, complex calculation methods, and opaque platform fees on the platform, the "Guidelines" clarify that the platform should reasonably formulate fee standards, improve fee rules, fee disclosure and other institutional mechanisms, strictly fulfill the commitment to reduce or waive fees, carefully evaluate the necessity of collecting deposits, carry out promotion services in accordance with the principle of equality and voluntariness, and ensure the right to know and choose of operators within the platform. For promotional and advertising activities, the Guidelines require that platforms should follow the principle of equality and voluntariness when conducting such activities, and should not force or indirectly force platform operators to participate and charge fees. When organizing promotional activities for operators within the platform, the platform should clarify in advance the sharing method and proportion of preferential subsidies between the platform and the operators within the platform. Without reaching a consensus with the platform operators, it is not allowed to temporarily charge promotional fees to the platform operators. The 'Guidelines' require platforms to standardize the charging rules for marketing and promotion fees and other expenses, and clearly disclose them, which will make the' hidden costs' of merchants more explicit and protect their legitimate rights and interests. ”Song Xiangqing stated that the implementation of the "Guidelines" is also expected to force platforms to improve their service quality by providing deep services such as data analysis and supply chain finance instead of simply charging fees. It is worth noting that the "Guidelines" also advocate reducing the burden on platform operators. Encourage platforms to adopt flexible and diverse pricing strategies within the scope of legality, reasonableness, and mutual benefit, provide discounts or exemptions to platform operators, especially small and medium-sized merchants, actively assume social responsibility, and reduce the operating burden of platform operators. The Guidelines explicitly prohibit unreasonable charges and encourage platforms to offer profits to small and medium-sized merchants. After this, the operating costs of merchants will be reduced, and their survival and profit margins will be expanded. ”Zhu Keli stated that the "Guidelines" will activate the business momentum of small and medium-sized businesses, thereby stimulating market vitality. In Song Xiangqing's view, the reduction of operating costs for merchants on the platform is expected to be transmitted to the terminals, benefiting more consumers. In terms of reducing the burden on platform operators, the Guidelines also encourage platforms to adopt flexible and diverse pricing strategies within a legal, reasonable, and mutually beneficial scope based on the service characteristics formed by their own technological innovation and business model innovation, in order to reduce the burden on platform operators and promote the common development of the platform and its operators. The 'Guidelines' will drive platforms to shift from' traffic operation 'to' service innovation ', thereby promoting the transformation of platform economy from scale expansion to value creation. ”Zhu Keli suggests that in the future, the charging logic of the platform should shift towards "differentiated services", considering the development of charging standards based on the operating conditions of merchants within the platform, enhancing added value through technological upgrades and service optimization, and forming a win-win situation between the platform and merchants. (New Society)