Inside China Tech: China’s central bank defines monopoly amid antitrust curb of fintech market
- The People’s Bank of China is moving ahead with a plan to curb market concentration in the world’s largest online payment services market
- Alibaba founder Jack Ma makes his first public appearance in nearly three months, while Tencent’s WeChat celebrates its 10th anniversary
Hi, this is Melissa Zhu from SCMP’s tech desk rounding up our top stories on China technology.
This week, we covered the central bank’s proposed definition of monopoly in China’s third-party online payments market, Alibaba Group Holding founder Jack Ma’s first public appearance in nearly three months and WeChat’s future outlook after a decade of influence.
Marking boundaries
Tracy Qu and Jane Zhang reported that under the draft rules, which are open to public feedback until February 19, any nonbank service provider with half of the market for online transactions, or two entities with a combined two-thirds share, could be subject to antitrust investigations.
Three providers with three-quarters of the market would also set off the antitrust alarm, but a nonbank service provider with less than 10 per cent market share that operates in a business with two or three dominant players will be excluded from antitrust probes, the central bank said.
