China issued new anti-trust guidelines targeting tech giants
China’s market regulator has released new anti-monopoly guidelines aimed at internet platforms; tightening existing restrictions faced by the country’s technology giants.
The new rules, published on Sunday, formalize an earlier anti-monopoly draft law released in November and clarify a series of monopolistic practices that regulators plan to crack down on.
The guidelines are expected to put new pressure on the country’s leading e-commerce sites such as Alibaba Group’s Taobao and Tmall marketplaces and JD.com. They will also cover payment services such as Ant Group’s Alipay and Tencent Holding’s WeChat Pay.
The rules, issued by the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) on its website; bar companies from a range of behavior; including forcing merchants to choose between the country’s top internet players, a longstanding practice in the market.
SAMR said the latest guidelines would “stop monopolistic behaviors in the platform economy and protect fair competition in the market.”
The notice also said it will stop companies from price-fixing, restricting technologies, and using data and algorithms to manipulate the market.
In a Q&A explanation accompanying the notice, SAMR said reports of internet-related anti-monopoly behavior had been increasing and that it was facing challenges regulating the industry.
The behavior is more concealed, the use of data, algorithms; platform rules, and so on make it more difficult to discover and determine what are monopoly agreements,” it said.
China’s Tighten scrutiny against tech giants
China has in recent months started to tighten scrutiny of its tech giants, reversing a once laissez-faire approach. China’s Politburo, the top decision-making body of the Communist Party; pledged in a meeting at the end of last year to strengthen anti-monopoly efforts in 2021. Less than two weeks after the meeting; China kicked off an investigation into Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. in December for allegedly monopolistic practices.
Those moves followed the dramatic suspension of the $37bn initial public offering plan of its payment affiliate, Ant Group.
