[NTD News November 22, 2021, Beijing time]The Sixth Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, which aims to pave the way for Xi Jinping to remain in power, has ended, but the Beijing authorities have not relaxed the supervision of Chinese Internet technology companies. A few days ago, a group of Internet companies, including Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent, were fined 500,000 yuan (the same below) by the State Administration for Market Regulation of the Communist Party of China for failing to declare certain transactions as required.
On Saturday (November 20), the State Administration of Market Supervision of the Communist Party of China (hereinafter referred to as the General Administration of Municipal Supervision) issued an announcement announcing that 43 companies involved in the “illegal implementation of the concentration of operators” were fined 500,000 yuan each.
According to the announcement of the Municipal Supervision Bureau, the companies that were punished this time were accused of violating Article 21 of the Anti-Monopoly Law issued by the Beijing authorities because some of the acquisition transactions did not report in a timely manner in accordance with official regulations.
Outsiders have noticed that well-known Chinese Internet companies such as Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, Suning.com, JD.com, Didi, and Meituan have once again appeared on the blacklists that have been punished. In addition, the penalized cases also involved companies in other fields such as maps and medical technology assets.
Among them, the Tencent department and the Ali department involved the most cases, involving 13 and 12 cases respectively. This means that the fines handed over by the two companies this time exceeded 5 million yuan.
Based on media reports in mainland China, the cases involved in Alibaba’s punishment include multiple equity acquisitions involving the company’s acquisition of AutoNavi Software (software), Meizu Technology, and Souche.
Tencent’s cases involved the acquisition of Beijing Tengkang Hui Medical Technology, China Medical Online, Tianjin Wuba Jinfu, Shenyang Meixing Technology and other equity acquisitions. Tencent and Ali jointly acquired equity in Yongyang Anfeng (Beijing) Technology. in.
The cases involving Beijing Baidu include the acquisition of shares in Nanjing Xinfeng Network Technology by the company and Nanjing Netdian.
Since the end of 2020, the Beijing authorities have significantly increased the supervision of Chinese technology companies on the grounds of antitrust and data security.
In March of this year, the General Administration of Supervision of the Municipal People’s Republic of China, in the name of “anti-monopoly”, has already dealt with 12 Chinese Internet technology companies including Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, Meituan, Suning, JD.com, Bytedance, Didi and other companies and their affiliates. The company was fined 500,000 yuan.
In April, Alibaba was fined 18.2 billion yuan by regulators for banning merchants on its online shopping platform from opening stores on other competitive platforms (commonly known as “choice of two”).
In July, the Municipal Supervision Bureau once again fined Tencent, Alibaba and other companies 500,000 yuan in the name of “anti-monopoly.”
In October, Meituan, the leading food delivery company, was also fined for forcing businesses to “choose one of two” and other acts, and the fine was as high as 3.4 billion yuan.
Overseas media generally believe that the Beijing authorities have suddenly increased their supervision of these large companies. The main reason is that the authorities worry that these large companies have too much control over related industries and that their powerful influence will pose a threat to the current regime.
(Reporter Liming Comprehensive Report/Responsible Editor: Lin Qing)
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