Alibaba in crosshairs of antitrust investigation
China’s top market watchdog said on Thursday it has launched a probe into e- commerce giant Alibaba’s suspected monopolistic acts including forcing merchants to choose one platform between two competitors, in a move that is believed to aim at protecting consumers rights and fairness in market competition to ensure the sound and long- term development of a massive part of China’s economy.
The antitrust probe into one of the world’s largest e- commerce giants, which attracted widespread domestic and global attention, sends a powerful signal of top regulators’ determination to rein in what officials call disorderly expansion of capital as part of a broad push to root out potential major risks for the economy, which remains on a steady recovery trajectory but also faces mounting internal and external risks.
The move, which came after years of efforts by policymakers to strengthen antitrust regulations and mounting concerns and call for action in the public, falls in line with a growing global trend of tightening regulations for big tech companies that wield massive economic as well as social influence. For Alibaba, the probe could mean deep reform and shift in its business operations and could subject the e- commerce giant into an antitrust fine of up to tens of billions of yuan, according to legal experts and market observers.
The probe was based on tip- offs, the State Administration for Market
Regulation ( SAMR) said in a statement released on its website, without elaborating further.
The news came on the heels of the annual tone- setting Central Economic Work Conference, which stressed that strengthening anti- monopoly regulation and preventing disorderly expansion of capital will be the top priorities for the coming year.
“It is good for the government to increase antimonopoly regulation, which shows that regulators have made progress in improving the market,” Dong Dengxin, director of the Finance and Securities Institute at the Wuhan University of Science and Technology, told the Global Times.
“Alibaba is a good example of China’s private economy, and the authorities also have the duty to supervise and guide them to develop healthily and steadily,” Dong said Thursday.