China launches anti-monopoly probe into Alibaba Group, stepping up pressure

Chinese regulators on Thursday announced an anti-monopoly investigation of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, stepping up the ruling Communist Party’s efforts to control fast-growing tech industries.

President Xi Jinping’s government promotes e-commerce and other online industries but worries about the dominance of Alibaba and other market leaders. The ruling party says anti-monopoly enforcement, especially in tech industries, will be a priority next year.

The market regulator said it was looking into Alibaba’s policy of “choose one of two,” which requires business partners to avoid dealing with its competitors. The one-sentence statement gave no details of possible penalties or a timeline to announce a result.

Proposed rules issued in November would ban exclusive contracts, subsidies and other tactics regulators say hurt competition.

Internet companies in the United States face similar scrutiny. Legislators and regulators are looking at whether advertising and other tactics by Facebook, Google and other companies improperly hamper competition.

Alibaba, set up in 1999, operates retail, business-to-business and consumer-to-consumer platforms. It is the world’s biggest e-commerce company by sales volume and has expanded into financial services, film production and other fields.

Alibaba’s founder, Jack Ma, is China’s richest entrepreneur with a net worth of $59 billion. He is widely admired and a ruling party member but has run into regulatory hurdles.

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In November, regulators jolted the Chinese business world by suspending the stock market debut of Ant Group, a former Alibaba subsidiary that is the world’s biggest online finance platform. It would have been the top global initial public offering this year.

Economists said regulators worried about financial risks, but businesspeople suggested Chinese leaders might have focused on Ant because Ma complained at a business conference in October that regulators failed to keep up with industry development and were blocking opportunities.

Alibaba’s CEO later praised regulators in a speech in a possible effort to repair relations.

Ma stepped down as Alibaba chairman in 2019 but still is one of its biggest shareholders and played a leading role in taking Ant to market.

Also Thursday, the market regulator announced Ant executives had been summoned to meet with regulators but gave no indication about the status of its stock offering. Ant said in a separate statement it would “study and strictly comply” with regulatory requirements but gave no details.

Ant offers services ranging from banking to insurance and securities, connecting users to state-owned banks and other institutions.

Ant promotes itself as a tech brand, not a financial institution. The decision to halt its stock offering suggested regulators rejected that and might require Ant to share in lending-related risk and enforce its own controls.

Communist leaders are trying to reduce financial risk since a surge in debt prompted concern about a possible financial crisis and led international rating agencies to cut Beijing’s credit rating for government borrowing.

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China has the world’s biggest population of internet users at 940 million, according to government data. An unusually large share of the public use e-commerce and other online services, giving internet companies outsize influence in retailing, entertainment and other industries.

Also this month, Alibaba and a company spun off by Tencent Holding Ltd., another Chinese internet giant, were fined for failing to apply for official approval before proceeding with some acquisitions.

The crackdown follows a boom for internet industries after millions of Chinese families were ordered to stay home during efforts to contain the coronavirus and switched to shopping and working online.

Alibaba said revenue rose 30% over a year earlier in the three months ending in September to 155.1 billion yuan ($23.4 billion).

The company said shoppers spent 498.2 billion yuan ($75.1 billion) on its platforms from Nov. 1 to 11 during the Singles Day shopping festival. The informal holiday begun in the 1990s has become the world’s biggest retail spending period.