China: Alibaba receives a record fine of more than two billion euros
This is a new blow for the Chinese group Alibaba (photo illustration) and more broadly for Chinese tech companies.
REUTERS - ALY SONG
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2 min
In China, the internet giant Alibaba, number one in online commerce, was fined a record over two billion euros for practices deemed anti-competitive according to financial regulators.
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With our correspondent in Beijing,
Zhifan Liu
It's a big blow for the Chinese group Alibaba and more broadly for Chinese tech companies.
The fine represents 4% of the group's income for the year 2019 and this is a new setback for this group which was the subject of an investigation, opened in December 2020.
In the viewfinder
Alibaba, which has its headquarters in Hangzhou in southern China, has been in the sights of the Chinese authorities for several weeks after the statements of its CEO Jack Ma in October 2020. A sometimes exuberant celebrity, he had openly criticized the weight of financial regulators, the same ones who decided to impose this record fine on his company.
In the process, Beijing blocked the listing of Ant Groupe, an online payment subsidiary, which was to be the largest in history.
More generally, the entire internet sector is under close surveillance and their influence is deemed too important by the communist regime, which demands that the tech giants refocus on their core business.
A withdrawal from the media?
Thus, according to the
Wall Street Journal
, Beijing would have asked Alibaba to withdraw from the media and in particular from the
South China Morning Post
, a large English-language daily in Hong Kong, sometimes critical of communist power.
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To read also: China: the boss of Ant Group, a subsidiary of the giant Alibaba, resigns
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