China’s Big Tech: From Free Development to Strict Regulation

... of China’s tech companies stemmed from the objective need to whip into shape the market environment and create conditions for healthy competition. This process was closely tied to combating “chaotic capital expansion”, analyzed above. China’s tech giants aggressively used non-competitive methods to push out smaller players. For instance, when China introduced regulations for financial technology platforms, Alibaba’s subsidiary Ant Group and Tencent’s WeChatPay service were virtually monopolists in the mobile payments market. These companies divvied up a market of 1 billion users, although officially another 233 Chinese companies ...