China fines internet giants in anti-monopoly cases

COMPANIES including internet giants Alibaba and Tencent were fined Wednesday by anti-monopoly regulators in a new move to tighten control over their fast-developing industries.

In 22 cases, companies were fined 500,000 yuan ( 75,000) each for actions including acquiring stakes in other companies that might improperly increase their market power, the State Administration for Market Regulation announced. It said violators include six companies owned by Alibaba roup, five by Tencent Holding Ltd. and two by retailer Suning.com, Ltd.

China’s leaders worry about the dominance of its biggest internet companies, which are expanding into finance, health services and other sensitive areas. The ruling Communist Party says anti-monopoly enforcement, especially in tech, is a priority this year.

In the biggest penalty to date, Alibaba was fined 18.3 billion yuan ( 2.8 billion) in April on charges of suppressing competition. Other companies have been fined or reprimanded for violating competition, data protection, censorship and other rules.

On Sunday, ride-hailing service Didi lobal Inc., which had a U.S. stock market debut last week, was ordered by regulators to overhaul its collection and handling of customer information.

Delay IPO, Didi told

Chinese regulators urged ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxin to delay its 4.4 billion New ork IPO to examine security concerns, advice the company did not heed, according to a report.

Didi was banned from app stores on Sunday by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), and now faces a probe over unspecified national security issues, in a move that stoked fresh concerns about Beijing’s crackdown on the country’s tech sector.

The watchdog attempted weeks before the bumper initial public offering to dissuade Didi from going ahead with it and urged the firm to launch an internal security probe, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter. But the industry giant -- dubbed China’s Uber, with more than 15 million drivers serving nearly 500 million users -- went ahead with last week’s listing, which was one of the biggest in the United States for a decade.

Officials were wary of the ridehailing company’s troves of data potentially falling into foreign hands owing to public disclosure around the listing, the Journal’s sources said.

Beijing’s scrutiny of Didi is the latest move in a wider crackdown on major US-listed tech firms.