China issues final anti-monopoly rules targeting large tech and payments companies



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China has finalized new guidelines to help in the antitrust battle against tech giants.

On February 7, the State Administration for Market Regulation released finalized rules for its anti-monopoly campaign against e-commerce and payments giants like Alibaba, Ant Group and Tencent.

The guide is aimed specifically at “operators providing business premises, transactional correspondence, information exchange and other Internet platform services”. It builds on a host of recent efforts by SAMR and the People’s Bank of China to harness the wider tech industry, specifically targeting payment platforms as the country continues to push its own digital currency forward. central bank.

The actual terms of the guidelines are quite familiar from antitrust regulation around the world, establishing restrictions on collusion, mergers and pricing. However, this is a major step in this larger context.

Last week, Ant Group reportedly reached an agreement to restructure its business. The firm had seen the Chinese government end its initial public offering in the fall over similar concerns both over Ant Group’s potential monopoly and founder Jack Ma’s criticism of Chinese financial regulation.

Cointelegraph previously noted that authorities in China and the United States are waging similar campaigns to curb widespread industrial abuse among key players in the tech industry. To complicate these legal battles, the anticompetitive actions taken by big tech companies often occur through data manipulation, which requires new investigative technologies to uncover and, often, new laws to prosecute.