On January 1, 2019 (November 26, 2018 in the lunar calendar), China's first "E-Commerce Law" was officially implemented. China's first "E-Commerce Law" came into effect On August 31, 2018, China's first comprehensive law in the field of e-commerce-the "E-Commerce Law of the People's Republic of China"(hereinafter referred to as the "E-Commerce Law") was voted and passed at the fifth meeting of the Standing Committee of the 13th National People's Congress and will come into effect on January 1, 2019. This is a law related to the pattern of China's Internet e-commerce industry. Different from other legislations led by ministries and commissions, the E-Commerce Law was initiated by the Financial and Economic Committee of the National People's Congress. It has a very high level of legislative effectiveness and aims to lay a basic legal framework for the development of China's e-commerce industry. The implementation of the E-Commerce Law is destined to be a difficult tug-of-war of interests. As early as the early days of legislation, the outline of industry associations representing the opinions of enterprises, the outline of academic circles with Peking University Law School as the main body, and the outline of the original version of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce representing regulatory opinions were revised dozens of times after integration to form a first-instance draft, which was submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress for review for the first time. From the formal launch of the legislative process at the end of 2013 to the final adoption this year, the E-commerce Law has gone through five years, four trials, and three disclosures. It involves e-commerce business entities, business behaviors, contracts, express logistics, electronic payments and other aspects. Legislation has been enacted on China's e-commerce industry in many aspects such as business qualifications, taxation, intellectual property rights, responsibility delineation, penalty standards, and cross-border e-commerce. Among them, the most controversial details such as WeChat industrial and commercial registration, cross-border e-commerce management regulations, and platform responsibilities still underwent several discussions and revisions during the final voting stage. Yin Zhongqing, deputy director of the Financial and Economic Committee of the National People's Congress, revealed that according to the Legislation Law, China's laws generally go through three trials, but the E-Commerce Law is rarely passed after four trials, which shows the complexity and prudence of the legislative process. The new law that was finally finalized has a total of seven chapters and 89 articles. It takes e-commerce operators and e-commerce platform operators as the regulatory entities, and sets regulations around four major parts: e-commerce contracts, dispute resolution, industry promotion and legal liability. Among them, it not only provides principled provisions on e-commerce operators 'obligations, platform responsibilities, basic rules, etc., but also summarizes practical experience in solving some common controversial issues in practice. Throughout the entire legal document, the principles of regulating business behavior and safeguarding consumer rights and interests run through it, and the responsibilities and obligations that e-commerce platforms and e-commerce platform operators need to bear are specified. In an interview with China News Weekly, Li Yongjian, director of the Internet Economics Research Office of China Academy of Social Sciences, believed that the legislative purpose of the E-Commerce Law is to protect consumer rights and promote the healthy development of the e-commerce industry, and strives to balance the interests of e-commerce platform operators, e-commerce operators and consumers. Yin Zhongqing, vice chairman of the Financial and Economic Committee of the National People's Congress, pointed out that practice over the years has proved that among the three parties involved in e-commerce, the most vulnerable are consumers, followed by e-commerce operators, and the most powerful are platform operators. Therefore, the "E-Commerce Law" hopes to protect the legitimate rights and interests of the three parties of e-commerce in a balanced manner, appropriately increases the responsibilities and obligations of e-commerce operators, especially third-party platforms, and appropriately strengthens the protection of e-commerce consumers. With the implementation of the final bill, e-commerce business practices have been further refined and standardized, and the legitimate rights and interests of all parties participating in e-commerce have also been further protected. However, in the ever-changing field of e-commerce, the E-Commerce Law has faced the risk of becoming obsolete since its promulgation. As the e-commerce industry moves towards regulation, the controversy surrounding the details of the bill is far from subside. On the eve of the passage of the E-Commerce Law, a key revision was made to a clause on the delineation of platform responsibilities. It is this clause that caused huge controversy in the third and fourth reviews, pushing public attention to the delineation of platform responsibilities to the peak. In the third review draft of the "E-Commerce Law"(Draft), the provisions of Article 37 are: "If an e-commerce platform operator knows or should know that the goods sold or services provided by the operator on the platform do not meet the requirements of protecting personal and property safety, or if there are other acts that infringe on the legitimate rights and interests of consumers and fail to take necessary measures, they shall bear joint and several liability with the operator on the platform in accordance with the law. On the afternoon of August 27, at the fifth meeting of the Standing Committee of the 13th National People's Congress, the fourth review draft revised Article 37 of the original third review draft to "For goods or services related to the lives and health of consumers, e-commerce platform operators fail to fulfill their obligation to review the qualifications and qualifications of operators on the platform, or fail to fulfill their safety obligations to consumers, causing damage to consumers, they shall bear corresponding supplementary responsibilities in accordance with the law." At this point, the platform's responsibility delineation expression has been changed from "joint and several liability" to "supplementary liability". Immediately afterwards, one day before the draft E-commerce Law was submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress for voting, the voting draft revised the words "bear corresponding supplementary responsibilities in accordance with the law" to "corresponding responsibilities" in the original draft of the fourth review draft, and deleted the word "supplementary". In the end, the platform's responsibility delineation and expression went from "joint liability" to "supplementary liability", and was finally finalized as "corresponding liability". "This process implies a game of interests among all parties." Yin Zhongqing revealed,"Some platform representatives believe that 'joint liability' is too strict, but later changed to 'corresponding supplementary liability' is too light. When finalizing the final version, it was changed to 'corresponding responsibility', which is more balanced. In the fourth review draft, the amendment from "joint liability" to "supplementary liability" has aroused strong doubts and disputes. Xu Xianming, Cai Fang and other members of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress publicly disagreed, believing that this amendment was a "backward move" and reduced platform responsibilities. As the main caller for the revision of "supplementary responsibilities", Li Yongjian told China Newsweek that the core of the controversy over the liability system lies in the original liability system and supervision system, which are no longer suitable for the current new platform economic structure. The fundamental reason is that the law seriously lags behind actual development. "The platform's responsibility allocation mechanism should be innovative, which is determined by the platform's economic characteristics." Li Yongjian said that under the new liability system, the platform should bear limited liability, including supplementary liability rather than joint liability, nor the traditional completely non-liability system. Legally speaking, the platform bears "joint and several liability" which means that when consumers 'rights and interests are damaged, they can sue both the platform and the merchants within the platform; while "supplementary liability" means that only when the merchants cannot meet the compensation claims, the platform needs to bear the corresponding supplementary liability for compensation. At the same time, it is naturally easier for consumers to prosecute the platform than the merchants on the platform. However, for the platform, there are a large number of merchants on the platform. If you have to bear joint and several liability for every possible damage, this means heavy burden and incalculable compliance risks. "If the platform is allowed to take responsibility, it will be a manifestation of laziness and unfair thinking." Liu Kaixiang, a professor at Peking University Law School and vice president of China Commercial Law Research Association, believed in an interview with China News Weekly that the platform needs to fulfill its security obligations, qualification review obligations, etc. to consumers, and bear supplementary compensation liability. If the platform can provide evidence that it has fulfilled its obligations and has no fault, it can consider exemption from liability. At the same time, the basis for amending it to "supplementary liability" is also consistent with the provisions of Article 37 of the Tort Liability Law. That is,"managers of public places or organizers of mass activities who fail to fulfill their safety obligations and cause damage to others shall bear tort liability. If damage is caused to others due to the behavior of a third party, the third party shall bear the tort liability; if the manager or organizer fails to fulfill its safety obligations, it shall bear corresponding supplementary responsibilities. "According to the provisions of the Tort Liability Law and relevant interpretations, joint and several liability means that there is no order between the responsible persons and all bear liability within the full scope. The parties can sue any person or all of them and require any person to bear all liability; Supplementary liability is to bear liability for the part that the infringer cannot pay off. There is a sequential relationship, and the liability is lighter than joint and several liability. Regarding the finalized expression of "corresponding responsibilities", Shi Jianzhong, vice president and law professor of China University of Political Science and Law, believes that from a legal perspective,"corresponding responsibilities" include but are not limited to "supplementary responsibilities" and even "joint and several liability." From this perspective, this amendment can be seen as progress in a certain sense. Shi Jianzhong also pointed out that "corresponding responsibilities" include a variety of possible types of responsibilities and ways of assuming them, which is not clear and clear enough. However, the unclear cost of illegal activities on e-commerce platforms means that consumer rights relief is lacking. If the "corresponding responsibilities" can only be determined through future amendments, detailed rules or litigation, it will increase the difficulty of claims and the cost of rights protection for consumers, making it difficult for their rights and interests to be effectively protected. Ending barbaric growth is a basic bill in the field of e-commerce in China. The promulgation of the E-commerce Law means accelerating industry standardization. Platforms, merchants, and consumers will all face more detailed constraints. In the past, the barbaric growth situation caused by information asymmetry and inconsistent rules will be ended. Regarding the controversy over addition and subtraction of platform responsibilities, the "E-Commerce Law" also clarifies the orientation of increasing the overall responsibility of the platform in many detailed clauses, and responds to many hot social issues. For example, the personalized recommendation clauses of "platform default tying","platform deposit refund issue" and "big data familiarity" are all aimed at further standardizing the platform's business behavior. The situation where platforms unilaterally formulate rules will become history. Regarding tie-in behavior, the E-commerce Law clearly stipulates that when e-commerce operators tie in goods or services, they should draw the attention of consumers in a prominent way, and must not use tie-in goods or services as a default consent option. In addition to confiscation of illegal income, offenders will also be fined a minimum of 50,000 yuan and a maximum of 50,000 yuan; Regarding the issue of deposit refunds, the e-commerce law stipulates that if e-commerce operators collect deposits from consumers as agreed, they should clearly state the deposit refund method and procedures, and unreasonable conditions shall not be set for the deposit refund. "In the past, platforms unilaterally stipulated that deposits could be refunded after a certain amount of consumption or a certain period of time would be prohibited. In the future, rule setting will focus more on fair negotiation and consumers 'choice." Liu Kaixiang told China News Weekly. At the same time, the platform's use of personal information and data will also be restricted. In response to the currently criticized "big data familiarization" behavior, the E-commerce Law clearly stipulates that e-commerce operators should promote goods or services to consumers based on their interests, hobbies, consumption habits and other characteristics, and should also provide non-consumer options to the consumers. Choice based on their personal characteristics respects and equally protects the legitimate rights and interests of consumers. Regarding the protection of personal information, the E-commerce Law states that e-commerce operators should abide by the personal information protection rules stipulated in relevant laws and administrative regulations when collecting and using the personal information of their users. In addition, in order to prevent monopoly and malicious competition, the platform previously required merchants to "choose one of two" for competitive purposes, and signed so-called "exclusive cooperation agreements" and other practices will become a thing of the past. The E-commerce Law clearly states that e-commerce operators must not abuse their dominant market position to exclude or restrict competition. "Although the provisions do not mention penalties, the supervision and disposal measures in this article will basically refer to the relevant provisions of the Anti-Monopoly Law and the Anti-Unfair Competition Law." Li Yongjian told China News Weekly. In addition to further tightening restrictions on platforms, the "E-Commerce Law" also puts forward detailed requirements for various forms of merchants in terms of qualifications, taxation and other aspects. According to the definition in the bill, natural persons, legal persons and unincorporated organizations that engage in business activities to sell goods or provide services through information networks such as the Internet are all "e-commerce operators." This means that not only e-commerce platform operators, operators within the platform, etc., but also micro-businesses and various "Internet celebrities" who use social platforms to achieve fan sales will also be included in the e-commerce category. In line with the principle of consistency between online and offline, all e-commerce operators that comply with the provisions of the Act must register as market entities in accordance with the law, perform tax obligations in accordance with the law, obtain administrative licenses in accordance with the law, and issue electronic invoices or service documents in accordance with the law. Individuals selling self-produced agricultural and sideline products and sporadic small transactions are exempted. This clause may become one of the most influential clauses after the implementation of the new law. Liu Kaixiang told China Newsweek that since tax registration is based on industrial and commercial registration, failure to register also means that tax avoidance benefits are in disguise. The introduction of the new law will greatly improve the general lack of entity, registration and security for online individual businesses. The "Basic Law on E-commerce" has natural flaws. From legislation to promulgation, doubts and disputes surrounding the "E-Commerce Law" have never subsided. In the final document content, increasing the responsibilities of platforms and merchants and strengthening the protection of consumer rights laid the tone of the entire bill. In Liu Kaixiang's view, the E-commerce Law is only an advocacy and principled basic law, and other laws and regulations need to be referred to when determining specific cases. During the negotiation of the bill, the platform's qualification review obligations and security obligations were continuously strengthened. Taking the fight against counterfeit goods as an example, the first draft of the draft stipulates that if platforms know that merchants on the platform infringe intellectual property rights, they should take necessary measures such as deleting, blocking, disconnecting links, and terminating transactions and services. At the beginning of the second review draft, the word "know" was changed to "know or should know". There are also changes similar to this regulation that "do not meet the requirements for protecting personal and property safety, or engage in other behaviors that infringe on the legitimate rights and interests of consumers." Starting from the second review draft, the bill stipulates that platforms that fail to take timely measures will bear joint and several liability with the operators on the platform in accordance with the law. "In the initial draft, the determination of knowing and not knowing was too absolute and inconvenient to define." Liu Kaixiang said. Regarding the determination that the platform "knows or should know", Liu Kaixiang put forward three definition suggestions. First, according to the principle of common sense, it should have the ability to distinguish between obvious behaviors of selling counterfeit goods in public perception; second, after receiving opinions on reporting fake goods, the platform should immediately verify and take measures; Third, when large-scale fake sales occur on the platform, it should proactively carry out investigation actions to rectify the business environment within the platform. In terms of promoting equal exchanges between e-commerce parties and users, the E-commerce Law requires that platforms should establish and improve a credit evaluation system, publicize credit evaluation rules, and not delete consumer evaluations. At the same time, the platform should display the search results of goods or services to consumers in multiple ways; for goods or services that are ranked in bidding,"advertisements" should be prominently marked. Regarding the protection of consumer rights and interests, in addition to e-commerce platforms and merchants, losses caused to users by online payment platforms have also been included in the regulations. The bill clarifies that if consumer losses are caused by erroneous payment instructions on the platform, the payment platform shall be held liable. If the payment platform can prove that the user is the wrong party, it will not be held liable. "During the entire revision process, the game of opinions of all parties is reflected in all aspects of the detailed rules." Recalling the drafting and adjustment process of the E-commerce Law, Yin Zhongqing said frankly that the drafting department extensively recruited industry associations, experts and scholars, and local e-commerce demonstration cities to conduct research and drafting, and gradually expanded consensus during the review and game process to make the draft more operable. However, after the E-Commerce Law was promulgated after several twists and turns, there are still many deficiencies in terms of detailed rules, attitudes, and reference to the law. "The current e-commerce ecosystem involves many fields, and there are bound to be flaws in using only a unified basic law to regulate it." Li Yongjian told China Newsweek that the existing e-commerce law belongs to the basic law, mainly focusing on online retail, but applies to all fields. In terms of the nature of transactions, the sale of goods and the provision of services are regarded as the same category, and there are no detailed regulations based on the characteristics of the services. For example, takeout platforms involving food safety and travel platforms involving traffic safety still have problems that the regulations are too general and can easily lead to quality disputes. When disputes arise, the reference value of the E-commerce Law is limited, and specific supervision and punishment rules still need to rely on relevant departments to refer to relevant laws. As for the rights protection and resolution mechanism of e-commerce, relying solely on existing legal provisions obviously cannot meet the huge and complex dispute situations. It has become a broad consensus to encourage the establishment of third-party institutions and platform self-adjudication mechanisms. "Most e-commerce disputes can be resolved through multi-party communication without wasting judicial resources. "Li Yongjian admitted to China Newsweek that in terms of channels for resolving rights protection issues, social welfare institutions can be set up with government funding to directly arbitrate; or e-commerce platforms can be encouraged to establish tripartite communication mechanisms, such as Taobao's arbitration resolution method; and through industry associations to negotiate self-discipline provisions to invent and create a professional e-commerce dispute adjudication mechanism. "Most of the provisions in the E-commerce Law are advocacy and do not provide any provisions on identification. There are many problems that it cannot solve. "Liu Kaixiang told China Newsweek," When the e-commerce field is deeply studied, it involves multiple departments and multiple laws. The nature of enterprises is complex and diverse. It is difficult to reconcile interests. This is also the practical reason why it cannot be truly refined. We can place the greatest expectations on the E-commerce Law, just to urge the e-commerce industry to develop in a healthy and orderly direction."On January 1, 2019 (November 26, 2018 in the lunar calendar), China's first "E-Commerce Law" was officially implemented. China's first "E-Commerce Law" came into effect On August 31, 2018, China's first comprehensive law in the field of e-commerce-the "E-Commerce Law of the People's Republic of China"(hereinafter referred to as the "E-Commerce Law") was voted and passed at the fifth meeting of the Standing Committee of the 13th National People's Congress and will come into effect on January 1, 2019. This is a law related to the pattern of China's Internet e-commerce industry. Different from other legislations led by ministries and commissions, the E-Commerce Law was initiated by the Financial and Economic Committee of the National People's Congress. It has a very high level of legislative effectiveness and aims to lay a basic legal framework for the development of China's e-commerce industry. The implementation of the E-Commerce Law is destined to be a difficult tug-of-war of interests. As early as the early days of legislation, the outline of industry associations representing the opinions of enterprises, the outline of academic circles with Peking University Law School as the main body, and the outline of the original version of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce representing regulatory opinions were revised dozens of times after integration to form a first-instance draft, which was submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress for review for the first time. From the formal launch of the legislative process at the end of 2013 to the final adoption this year, the E-commerce Law has gone through five years, four trials, and three disclosures. It involves e-commerce business entities, business behaviors, contracts, express logistics, electronic payments and other aspects. Legislation has been enacted on China's e-commerce industry in many aspects such as business qualifications, taxation, intellectual property rights, responsibility delineation, penalty standards, and cross-border e-commerce. Among them, the most controversial details such as WeChat industrial and commercial registration, cross-border e-commerce management regulations, and platform responsibilities still underwent several discussions and revisions during the final voting stage. Yin Zhongqing, deputy director of the Financial and Economic Committee of the National People's Congress, revealed that according to the Legislation Law, China's laws generally go through three trials, but the E-Commerce Law is rarely passed after four trials, which shows the complexity and prudence of the legislative process. The new law that was finally finalized has a total of seven chapters and 89 articles. It takes e-commerce operators and e-commerce platform operators as the regulatory entities, and sets regulations around four major parts: e-commerce contracts, dispute resolution, industry promotion and legal liability. Among them, it not only provides principled provisions on e-commerce operators 'obligations, platform responsibilities, basic rules, etc., but also summarizes practical experience in solving some common controversial issues in practice. Throughout the entire legal document, the principles of regulating business behavior and safeguarding consumer rights and interests run through it, and the responsibilities and obligations that e-commerce platforms and e-commerce platform operators need to bear are specified. In an interview with China News Weekly, Li Yongjian, director of the Internet Economics Research Office of China Academy of Social Sciences, believed that the legislative purpose of the E-Commerce Law is to protect consumer rights and promote the healthy development of the e-commerce industry, and strives to balance the interests of e-commerce platform operators, e-commerce operators and consumers. Yin Zhongqing, vice chairman of the Financial and Economic Committee of the National People's Congress, pointed out that practice over the years has proved that among the three parties involved in e-commerce, the most vulnerable are consumers, followed by e-commerce operators, and the most powerful are platform operators. Therefore, the "E-Commerce Law" hopes to protect the legitimate rights and interests of the three parties of e-commerce in a balanced manner, appropriately increases the responsibilities and obligations of e-commerce operators, especially third-party platforms, and appropriately strengthens the protection of e-commerce consumers. With the implementation of the final bill, e-commerce business practices have been further refined and standardized, and the legitimate rights and interests of all parties participating in e-commerce have also been further protected. However, in the ever-changing field of e-commerce, the E-Commerce Law has faced the risk of becoming obsolete since its promulgation. As the e-commerce industry moves towards regulation, the controversy surrounding the details of the bill is far from subside. On the eve of the passage of the E-Commerce Law, a key revision was made to a clause on the delineation of platform responsibilities. It is this clause that caused huge controversy in the third and fourth reviews, pushing public attention to the delineation of platform responsibilities to the peak. In the third review draft of the "E-Commerce Law"(Draft), the provisions of Article 37 are: "If an e-commerce platform operator knows or should know that the goods sold or services provided by the operator on the platform do not meet the requirements of protecting personal and property safety, or if there are other acts that infringe on the legitimate rights and interests of consumers and fail to take necessary measures, they shall bear joint and several liability with the operator on the platform in accordance with the law. On the afternoon of August 27, at the fifth meeting of the Standing Committee of the 13th National People's Congress, the fourth review draft revised Article 37 of the original third review draft to "For goods or services related to the lives and health of consumers, e-commerce platform operators fail to fulfill their obligation to review the qualifications and qualifications of operators on the platform, or fail to fulfill their safety obligations to consumers, causing damage to consumers, they shall bear corresponding supplementary responsibilities in accordance with the law." At this point, the platform's responsibility delineation expression has been changed from "joint and several liability" to "supplementary liability". Immediately afterwards, one day before the draft E-commerce Law was submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress for voting, the voting draft revised the words "bear corresponding supplementary responsibilities in accordance with the law" to "corresponding responsibilities" in the original draft of the fourth review draft, and deleted the word "supplementary". In the end, the platform's responsibility delineation and expression went from "joint liability" to "supplementary liability", and was finally finalized as "corresponding liability". "This process implies a game of interests among all parties." Yin Zhongqing revealed,"Some platform representatives believe that 'joint liability' is too strict, but later changed to 'corresponding supplementary liability' is too light. When finalizing the final version, it was changed to 'corresponding responsibility', which is more balanced. In the fourth review draft, the amendment from "joint liability" to "supplementary liability" has aroused strong doubts and disputes. Xu Xianming, Cai Fang and other members of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress publicly disagreed, believing that this amendment was a "backward move" and reduced platform responsibilities. As the main caller for the revision of "supplementary responsibilities", Li Yongjian told China Newsweek that the core of the controversy over the liability system lies in the original liability system and supervision system, which are no longer suitable for the current new platform economic structure. The fundamental reason is that the law seriously lags behind actual development. "The platform's responsibility allocation mechanism should be innovative, which is determined by the platform's economic characteristics." Li Yongjian said that under the new liability system, the platform should bear limited liability, including supplementary liability rather than joint liability, nor the traditional completely non-liability system. Legally speaking, the platform bears "joint and several liability" which means that when consumers 'rights and interests are damaged, they can sue both the platform and the merchants within the platform; while "supplementary liability" means that only when the merchants cannot meet the compensation claims, the platform needs to bear the corresponding supplementary liability for compensation. At the same time, it is naturally easier for consumers to prosecute the platform than the merchants on the platform. However, for the platform, there are a large number of merchants on the platform. If you have to bear joint and several liability for every possible damage, this means heavy burden and incalculable compliance risks. "If the platform is allowed to take responsibility, it will be a manifestation of laziness and unfair thinking." Liu Kaixiang, a professor at Peking University Law School and vice president of China Commercial Law Research Association, believed in an interview with China News Weekly that the platform needs to fulfill its security obligations, qualification review obligations, etc. to consumers, and bear supplementary compensation liability. If the platform can provide evidence that it has fulfilled its obligations and has no fault, it can consider exemption from liability. At the same time, the basis for amending it to "supplementary liability" is also consistent with the provisions of Article 37 of the Tort Liability Law. That is,"managers of public places or organizers of mass activities who fail to fulfill their safety obligations and cause damage to others shall bear tort liability. If damage is caused to others due to the behavior of a third party, the third party shall bear the tort liability; if the manager or organizer fails to fulfill its safety obligations, it shall bear corresponding supplementary responsibilities. "According to the provisions of the Tort Liability Law and relevant interpretations, joint and several liability means that there is no order between the responsible persons and all bear liability within the full scope. The parties can sue any person or all of them and require any person to bear all liability; Supplementary liability is to bear liability for the part that the infringer cannot pay off. There is a sequential relationship, and the liability is lighter than joint and several liability. Regarding the finalized expression of "corresponding responsibilities", Shi Jianzhong, vice president and law professor of China University of Political Science and Law, believes that from a legal perspective,"corresponding responsibilities" include but are not limited to "supplementary responsibilities" and even "joint and several liability." From this perspective, this amendment can be seen as progress in a certain sense. Shi Jianzhong also pointed out that "corresponding responsibilities" include a variety of possible types of responsibilities and ways of assuming them, which is not clear and clear enough. However, the unclear cost of illegal activities on e-commerce platforms means that consumer rights relief is lacking. If the "corresponding responsibilities" can only be determined through future amendments, detailed rules or litigation, it will increase the difficulty of claims and the cost of rights protection for consumers, making it difficult for their rights and interests to be effectively protected. Ending barbaric growth is a basic bill in the field of e-commerce in China. The promulgation of the E-commerce Law means accelerating industry standardization. Platforms, merchants, and consumers will all face more detailed constraints. In the past, the barbaric growth situation caused by information asymmetry and inconsistent rules will be ended. Regarding the controversy over addition and subtraction of platform responsibilities, the "E-Commerce Law" also clarifies the orientation of increasing the overall responsibility of the platform in many detailed clauses, and responds to many hot social issues. For example, the personalized recommendation clauses of "platform default tying","platform deposit refund issue" and "big data familiarity" are all aimed at further standardizing the platform's business behavior. The situation where platforms unilaterally formulate rules will become history. Regarding tie-in behavior, the E-commerce Law clearly stipulates that when e-commerce operators tie in goods or services, they should draw the attention of consumers in a prominent way, and must not use tie-in goods or services as a default consent option. In addition to confiscation of illegal income, offenders will also be fined a minimum of 50,000 yuan and a maximum of 50,000 yuan; Regarding the issue of deposit refunds, the e-commerce law stipulates that if e-commerce operators collect deposits from consumers as agreed, they should clearly state the deposit refund method and procedures, and unreasonable conditions shall not be set for the deposit refund. "In the past, platforms unilaterally stipulated that deposits could be refunded after a certain amount of consumption or a certain period of time would be prohibited. In the future, rule setting will focus more on fair negotiation and consumers 'choice." Liu Kaixiang told China News Weekly. At the same time, the platform's use of personal information and data will also be restricted. In response to the currently criticized "big data familiarization" behavior, the E-commerce Law clearly stipulates that e-commerce operators should promote goods or services to consumers based on their interests, hobbies, consumption habits and other characteristics, and should also provide non-consumer options to the consumers. Choice based on their personal characteristics respects and equally protects the legitimate rights and interests of consumers. Regarding the protection of personal information, the E-commerce Law states that e-commerce operators should abide by the personal information protection rules stipulated in relevant laws and administrative regulations when collecting and using the personal information of their users. In addition, in order to prevent monopoly and malicious competition, the platform previously required merchants to "choose one of two" for competitive purposes, and signed so-called "exclusive cooperation agreements" and other practices will become a thing of the past. The E-commerce Law clearly states that e-commerce operators must not abuse their dominant market position to exclude or restrict competition. "Although the provisions do not mention penalties, the supervision and disposal measures in this article will basically refer to the relevant provisions of the Anti-Monopoly Law and the Anti-Unfair Competition Law." Li Yongjian told China News Weekly. In addition to further tightening restrictions on platforms, the "E-Commerce Law" also puts forward detailed requirements for various forms of merchants in terms of qualifications, taxation and other aspects. According to the definition in the bill, natural persons, legal persons and unincorporated organizations that engage in business activities to sell goods or provide services through information networks such as the Internet are all "e-commerce operators." This means that not only e-commerce platform operators, operators within the platform, etc., but also micro-businesses and various "Internet celebrities" who use social platforms to achieve fan sales will also be included in the e-commerce category. In line with the principle of consistency between online and offline, all e-commerce operators that comply with the provisions of the Act must register as market entities in accordance with the law, perform tax obligations in accordance with the law, obtain administrative licenses in accordance with the law, and issue electronic invoices or service documents in accordance with the law. Individuals selling self-produced agricultural and sideline products and sporadic small transactions are exempted. This clause may become one of the most influential clauses after the implementation of the new law. Liu Kaixiang told China Newsweek that since tax registration is based on industrial and commercial registration, failure to register also means that tax avoidance benefits are in disguise. The introduction of the new law will greatly improve the general lack of entity, registration and security for online individual businesses. The "Basic Law on E-commerce" has natural flaws. From legislation to promulgation, doubts and disputes surrounding the "E-Commerce Law" have never subsided. In the final document content, increasing the responsibilities of platforms and merchants and strengthening the protection of consumer rights laid the tone of the entire bill. In Liu Kaixiang's view, the E-commerce Law is only an advocacy and principled basic law, and other laws and regulations need to be referred to when determining specific cases. During the negotiation of the bill, the platform's qualification review obligations and security obligations were continuously strengthened. Taking the fight against counterfeit goods as an example, the first draft of the draft stipulates that if platforms know that merchants on the platform infringe intellectual property rights, they should take necessary measures such as deleting, blocking, disconnecting links, and terminating transactions and services. At the beginning of the second review draft, the word "know" was changed to "know or should know". There are also changes similar to this regulation that "do not meet the requirements for protecting personal and property safety, or engage in other behaviors that infringe on the legitimate rights and interests of consumers." Starting from the second review draft, the bill stipulates that platforms that fail to take timely measures will bear joint and several liability with the operators on the platform in accordance with the law. "In the initial draft, the determination of knowing and not knowing was too absolute and inconvenient to define." Liu Kaixiang said. Regarding the determination that the platform "knows or should know", Liu Kaixiang put forward three definition suggestions. First, according to the principle of common sense, it should have the ability to distinguish between obvious behaviors of selling counterfeit goods in public perception; second, after receiving opinions on reporting fake goods, the platform should immediately verify and take measures; Third, when large-scale fake sales occur on the platform, it should proactively carry out investigation actions to rectify the business environment within the platform. In terms of promoting equal exchanges between e-commerce parties and users, the E-commerce Law requires that platforms should establish and improve a credit evaluation system, publicize credit evaluation rules, and not delete consumer evaluations. At the same time, the platform should display the search results of goods or services to consumers in multiple ways; for goods or services that are ranked in bidding,"advertisements" should be prominently marked. Regarding the protection of consumer rights and interests, in addition to e-commerce platforms and merchants, losses caused to users by online payment platforms have also been included in the regulations. The bill clarifies that if consumer losses are caused by erroneous payment instructions on the platform, the payment platform shall be held liable. If the payment platform can prove that the user is the wrong party, it will not be held liable. "During the entire revision process, the game of opinions of all parties is reflected in all aspects of the detailed rules." Recalling the drafting and adjustment process of the E-commerce Law, Yin Zhongqing said frankly that the drafting department extensively recruited industry associations, experts and scholars, and local e-commerce demonstration cities to conduct research and drafting, and gradually expanded consensus during the review and game process to make the draft more operable. However, after the E-Commerce Law was promulgated after several twists and turns, there are still many deficiencies in terms of detailed rules, attitudes, and reference to the law. "The current e-commerce ecosystem involves many fields, and there are bound to be flaws in using only a unified basic law to regulate it." Li Yongjian told China Newsweek that the existing e-commerce law belongs to the basic law, mainly focusing on online retail, but applies to all fields. In terms of the nature of transactions, the sale of goods and the provision of services are regarded as the same category, and there are no detailed regulations based on the characteristics of the services. For example, takeout platforms involving food safety and travel platforms involving traffic safety still have problems that the regulations are too general and can easily lead to quality disputes. When disputes arise, the reference value of the E-commerce Law is limited, and specific supervision and punishment rules still need to rely on relevant departments to refer to relevant laws. As for the rights protection and resolution mechanism of e-commerce, relying solely on existing legal provisions obviously cannot meet the huge and complex dispute situations. It has become a broad consensus to encourage the establishment of third-party institutions and platform self-adjudication mechanisms. "Most e-commerce disputes can be resolved through multi-party communication without wasting judicial resources. "Li Yongjian admitted to China Newsweek that in terms of channels for resolving rights protection issues, social welfare institutions can be set up with government funding to directly arbitrate; or e-commerce platforms can be encouraged to establish tripartite communication mechanisms, such as Taobao's arbitration resolution method; and through industry associations to negotiate self-discipline provisions to invent and create a professional e-commerce dispute adjudication mechanism. "Most of the provisions in the E-commerce Law are advocacy and do not provide any provisions on identification. There are many problems that it cannot solve. "Liu Kaixiang told China Newsweek," When the e-commerce field is deeply studied, it involves multiple departments and multiple laws. The nature of enterprises is complex and diverse. It is difficult to reconcile interests. This is also the practical reason why it cannot be truly refined. We can place the greatest expectations on the E-commerce Law, just to urge the e-commerce industry to develop in a healthy and orderly direction."