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BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s market regulator said on Friday it had fined 12 companies linked to 10 transactions that demonstrated illegal monopoly behavior.
The companies included Baidu Inc, Tencent Holdings, Didi Chuxing, SoftBank and a company backed by ByteDance, the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) said in a statement on Friday.
The companies were fined 500,000 yuan ($ 77,000) each for behavior that caused market concentration, but did not rule out competition from other companies, SAMR said.
Tencent said in a statement that it will actively rectify operations and timely report to the regulator in future cases.
ByteDance said a joint venture between its affiliate and Shanghai Dongfang Newspaper Co Ltd, both of which had been fined, never went into operation and the JV was dissolved in January.
Baidu, Didi and SoftBank did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
China has stepped up its scrutiny of its internet giants in recent months, citing concerns over monopoly behavior and the potential violation of consumer rights.
The regulator fined Alibaba, Tencent-backed China Literature, and other companies for failing to properly report transactions under antitrust reviews. He also fined a company involved in an auto-related deal on Thursday.
Reporting by Yingzhi Yang, Cheng Leng, Pei Li, Yilei Sun and Tony Munroe; Edited by Christian Schmollinger, Karishma Singh and Lincoln Feast.
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