After Alibaba, Tencent, another Chinese online business, has also become the target of “anti-monopoly” by the Chinese Communist Party authorities. Although Tencent founder Ma Huateng recently met with central government officials to clarify suspicions of monopoly, there are reports that an inspection team from the CPC Central Committee was stationed at Tencent’s headquarters in Shenzhen last week to carry out “a series of investigations”. The members of the inspection team even said frankly that the purpose of the visit to Tencent was to “anti-monopoly.
Radio Free Asia reports that news of the Central Inspection Group’s presence at Tencent came from a number of sources who asked not to be named. They said the inspection team also spoke with Tencent’s top executives about some of Tencent’s business practices. One of them, Ms. Sun, said that the central inspection team’s presence at Tencent “should be similar to that of Ali (Baba), which is explicitly said to be involved in anti-monopoly.
Ms. Sun pointed out that the Chinese Communist Party officials still do not want private enterprises to sit on top of the market, and that the top brass of the Communist Party “all think the same way” and believe that entrepreneurs cannot sit on top of the market. On the stage, they all say they are involved in “commercial monopoly”, which should be the direction of the official policy of the CCP.
Ms. Sun also cited the recent resignation of Huang Zheng, chairman of Chinese online shopper “Jindo,” whose stock price has soared and surpassed that of Alibaba, and who is the largest e-commerce company in China in terms of customers, as an example. The resignation of the chairman of China’s private companies is likely to become a trend, indicating that the Communist Party should be limiting the number of large private companies.
Reuters recently cited sources familiar with the matter as saying that Ma Huateng met with officials from China’s antitrust regulator during the country’s “two sessions,” during which the two sides discussed “how Tencent can better comply with antitrust regulations. However, the meeting was widely perceived as a sign that Chinese Communist Party officials are targeting Tencent after Alibaba.
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