BEIJING — Regulators have launched an anti-trust probe into
Meituan, one of China’s biggest food delivery firms, they said Monday, as
Beijing clips the wings of its soaring tech companies.
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The probe was prompted by reports that Meituan allegedly
engaged in forced exclusivity agreements with vendors, the State Administration
for Market Regulation said in a statement.
Those were among its “suspected monopolistic behaviors”, the
regulator said.
E-commerce titan Alibaba was hit by a record 18.2 billion
yuan ($2.78 billion) fine this month after facing a similar charge.
The woes of Meituan, which counts gaming giant Tencent as a
shareholder, is the latest sign that China’s assault on big tech is far from
over.
Beijing has taken the country’s tech firms to task in order
to curtail the reach of private companies into the public’s daily finances and
— analysts believe — to rein in their runaway expansion as well as the status
of their super-rich founders.
Two weeks ago the regulator warned 34 technology giants —
including Baidu, Tencent and Meituan — to “rectify” any anti-competitive
measures, prompting a series of public pledges to abide by anti-monopoly
guidelines.
Regulators told internet companies to “heed the warning of
Alibaba’s case”.
Alibaba too had come under fire for forcing the practice of
“choosing one of two” on retailers — where merchants are compelled to work only
with one platform and not its rivals.
Companies such as e-commerce platform JD.com have since
pledged to avoid such behavior.
Alibaba and JD.com, along with Tencent, have become hugely
profitable on the back of growing Chinese digital lifestyles and government
restrictions on major US competitors in the domestic market.
But as the platforms amassed hundreds of millions of regular
users, concern has risen over their influence in China, where they are used for
a huge array of daily tasks.
Fintech firm Ant Group, an Alibaba affiliate whose planned
record-shattering $35 billion Hong Kong-Shanghai IPO was shelved late last
year, also announced this month it would comply with an overhaul outlined by
regulators and become a financial holding company — meaning it will be
supervised more like a bank in the future.
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