Alibaba is under the radar of China’s market regulator as it suspects them for monopolistic behaviour. The State Administration for Market Regulation has posted a statement-making everyone aware of the anti-monopoly investigations they are carrying out. They have an issue with Alibaba for their choosing one from two” policy. As per the Tech Crunch, this policy is forceful as it drives the merchants not to do their selling on other e-commerce platforms like JD.com and Pinduoduo.
This is one of the many actions taken by the regulator to erupt the anti-competitive behaviour between the local tech companies. They introduced a set of laws on November which according to them protects the consumers by restricting the amount of data collected by the companies.
According to South China Morning Post, a meeting which has been summoned by the regulator is scheduled between Alibaba, JD.com, Tencent, Meituan, Pinduoduo and Didi Chuxing on Tuesday. They further added that 9 rules would be announced at the meeting for them to follow. It is reported that these companies would be prohibited to sell goods at cheap prices in the attempt of crushing their competition down as it leads to a monopoly within the market.
The regulators have blocked $34 billion IPO of the Ant group which is an affiliate of Alibaba who are the owners of the digital payment service, Alipay. So the facts prove that Alibaba is not the only company which is under the scrutiny of the regulators. But the interesting part is that both these companies are owned by Jack-Ma, reports the Wall Street Journal.
When it comes to the tech giants, Alibaba is not the only company who are facing anti-monopoly and anti-trust probes. Take Google for an example who has been hit by 3 anti-trust lawsuits during 2020. As per the reports, they will likely face one more in January 2021.
Even Facebook was heavily criticized for their acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp. The Federal Trade Commission has also filed antitrust charges against Facebook for their competitor crushing behaviour.
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