Source: Economic Daily
Strengthening and improving market regulation is an important direction in the transformation of government functions, an important guarantee to maintain fair competition in the market and fully stimulate market dynamism and creativity, and also an important task in the modernization of the state’s governance system and governance ability. During the 13th Five-Year Plan period, China’s market regulation is facing new situations, new tasks and new challenges. How should we enhance the spirit of innovation, lead market regulation with modern concepts, arm market regulation with a modern science and technology, and promote market regulation with modern regulatory approach? One important focus is to make full use of big data technology to innovate regulatory approach. This will not only help improve the pertinence and effectiveness of the regulation, but also help realize “the combination of power delegation and regulation strengthening” and give full play to the supervisory role of the public for market players. In this process, four key points shall be grasped:
Key point 1:
Establish a unified market regulation information platform
Market Regulation Planning during the 13th Five-Year Plan Period emphasizes the establishment and perfection of a national integrated information platform for enterprise credit information collection, sharing, and utilization. A big data laboratory for market regulation must be constructed and the construction of an integrated law enforcement platform for unified market regulation must be promoted. This points the direction for the establishment of a unified market regulation information platform.
The first imperative is to break “information silos” to realize information co-construction and sharing among departments. The national population basic information database, legal entity information resource database, enterprise credit information announcement system, and other resources can be relied on to establish a unified national credit information system as soon as possible; regional blockade and departmental segmentation of information must be broken and credit information of related departments must be integrated to realize credit information sharing among regions and departments, and to eliminate interdepartmental information barriers.
Second, is to promote full coverage of regulatory matters and establish a real-time regulatory mechanism. The rapid development of the Internet must be utilized to establish “Internet + regulation” mode, promote “intelligent” regulation and achieve the regulation in a comprehensive and real-time manner; Internet technology must be fully utilized to achieve real-time online supervision and strengthen off-site supervision and law enforcement, enterprise market access, quality supervision, market transaction regulation, consumer rights protection, food safety, and other information shall be included in the regulatory system through big data technology, to completely record the whole process of market regulation, achieve the goals that regulation information can be inquired, traced and used for, and thus enhance the effectiveness of market regulation.
Third, is to realize the openness of credit information of enterprises. The construction of a credit information announcement system for market players must be accelerated to increase market transparency; the implementation of the directory of enterprises with abnormal business operations, and the list of enterprises with serious illegal and dishonest acts must be speeded up, to encourage and guide enterprises to voluntarily announce their information; the carrying out of socialized credit information announcement services must be supported, to facilitate the public understanding of the credit status of market players.
Key point 2:
Promote the standardization and specialization of market regulation
Based on the practice of developed countries, the standardization and specialization of market regulation is an important experience. There is still a big gap between China’s regulatory standards and those of developed countries. On the whole, the number of international standards formulated under the leadership of China is limited. During the 13th Five-Year Plan period, to meet the requirements for market regulation in the era of big data, the internationalization level of China’s market regulation standards needs to be substantially improved. For example, international standards may be introduced to implement regulation; enterprises must be encouraged to develop enterprise standards with international competitiveness; and the revision of the Standardization Act must be accelerated.
Promoting the standardization and specialization of market regulation must also make full use of new technologies to strengthen market regulation. For example, in the process of studying and developing market regulation system and policy, big data, the Internet of Things, cloud computing and other new generation information technologies must be fully utilized to monitor regulatory targets, with a disposal plan being put forward in a timely manner to improve market regulation ability; the data on market regulation, statutory inspection and monitoring, illegal and dishonest acts, complaints and reports, and the data that should be disclosed by enterprises according to law must be disclosed to the public in a timely manner, to strengthen the regulation of enterprises in the process and afterwards; an information sharing platform between regulators and public security, judicial, finance, and other departments must be established to enhance joint law enforcement capability.
Strengthening the cultivation of professional regulatory personnel should be the stressed. Big data based regulation involves professional knowledge in computer science, statistics, mathematics, accounting, legal, and other fields, and thus requires a professional team of regulatory personnel. To this end, during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, efforts must be made to build a rationally structured professional team of inter-disciplinary regulatory personnel of high quality. The institutions of higher education and enterprises can be encouraged to jointly train inter-disciplinary talents, and talents for practice and innovation of big data. Meanwhile, the training for governmental supervisors must also be strengthened to improve their ability to use big data.
Key point 3:
Establish a joint disciplinary mechanism for credit fraud
Big data and other new generation information technologies must be used to realize regulatory innovation under the “Internet+” background in the present and future periods, and one important point is to establish a joint disciplinary mechanism for credit fraud.
First, big data shall be used to take joint disciplinary action on credit misconduct. An integrated information sharing mechanism and joint disciplinary mechanism for credit fraud must be perfected. Enterprise credit data shall be collected and analyzed by making full use of big data, the early warning mechanism for enterprises’ lack of credibility must be established, and the comprehensive supervision efficiency of industrial and commercial administration, justice, finance and other fields must be given full play. In terms of market access, administrative examination & approval, government procurement and bank credit, interdepartmental linkage response and dishonesty constraint mechanism shall be established to restrict or ban the entities with illegal and dishonest acts according to law and to let such entities pay a heavy price.
Second, a unified national credit standard system must be gradually established. At present, all regions and industries throughout the country are building social credit system. The problem is that credit standards are not uniform among these regions. Credit information between regions and between industries has not been interconnected, resulting in low-level repetitive construction in all regions. To this end, during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, a unified social credit code system must be established in accordance with Overall Plan for the Construction of Unified Social Credit Code System for Legal Entities and Other Organizations jointly formulated by the National Development and Reform Commission and other ministries, to identify legal entities and other organizations with organization code and achieve full coverage of credit system.
Key point 4:
Form an accurate regulatory pattern based on informatization
In recent years, with the gradual deepening of the reform of the commercial system, there has been a blowout growth in the number of market players and an explosive increase in the amount of information in society. The huge amount of data has brought new challenges to regulatory capability. Facing new situations and new challenges, we need to not only monitor enterprise information, but also carry out cooperation among regulatory departments on the basis of overall promotion of big data regulation, so as to form an accurate regulatory pattern based on informatization.
On the one hand, the monitoring of enterprise credit information shall be strengthened and data application be enhanced. The collection, mining and analysis techniques for statistical survey information must be innovated and the correlation, comparison, analysis and other processing services for cross-departmental data information must be enhanced, to make full use of the value of such data. Data collection, data analysis, and data application shall be strengthened to enhance the comprehensive analysis and practical application of credit data. A scientific data analysis model must be built based on information on market players, commodity quality, consumer complaints, commodity prices etc., Market players performing illegal acts must be detected in a timely manner by data comparison, analysis, and screening, and relevant information must be announced to the public, in order to reasonably guide market expectations.
On the other hand, refined supervision must be implemented and the cooperation between regulatory departments be strengthened. First is to implement digital regulation, with law enforcement personnel being supervised to make full use of information and big data technologies, so as to fully implement digital regulation, and achieve the shift towards data statistics and quantitative analysis & management. Second is to strengthen the cooperation among regulatory departments. On the basis of sharing information among regulatory departments, the mechanism to jointly fight against dishonest acts of enterprises shall be established, and industry & commerce departments, quality supervision departments, food & drug administration and other departments shall be encouraged to carry out cooperation in fighting against dishonest acts of enterprises.
(The author is a member of the Academic Committee of Shanghai Academy and President of China Institute for Reform and Development)