The Chinese government tightened the antitrust law on February 7th (local time). The newly enacted guidelines stipulate that the act of requiring customers not to do business with competitors is prohibited, and it is possible to strengthen and implement e-commerce systems such as Taobao operated by Alibaba and payment services such as Alibaba Alipay and Tencent WeChat Pay in mind. have.
The newly enacted guidelines clarify antitrust legislation issued in November 2020 and have been a practice on Chinese e-commerce platforms. It is impossible to manipulate prices, such as asking customers not to trade as competitors, selling them much cheaper than competitors, or fixing prices. It also prohibits market manipulation by corporate technology restriction data and algorithms.
This strengthening of antitrust forced Alibaba to sign an exclusive cooperation agreement in December 2020 that forced its customers to choose the platform. In addition, it is believed that this was caused by the illegal activity of Alibaba and Tencent’s Jingdong.com, which previously raised a discount to call a sale. In response to the move, regulators say they will protect fair competition in the market by banning monopolistic behavior in the platform economy. Related information can be found here .