Chinese regulators warned dozens of Internet companies

Chinese regulators on Tuesday warned dozens of Internet companies to learn from a record fine for Alibaba's e-commerce and to stop using any prohibited practices. Such as forcing sellers to use only their platforms. The State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) said it met with representatives of 34 companies, including giants such as Tencent, ByteDance, the owner of the TikTok application, JD.com or Baidu. It ordered them to carry out self-checks within a month and to rectify their practices if they infringed competition rules. Otherwise, they face "severe penalties". SAMR also said that despite the positive development of the "platform economy" in China, it cannot ignore any damage and waste time repairing the law. The meeting, co-organized by SAMR with tax and cyber regulators, took place two days after Beijing fined a record 18.3 billion yuan (2.35 billion euros) in Alibaba's online store for four abuses of market dominance after a four-month investigation. Although the punishment was less severe than many feared, it raised questions about the fate of Alibaba founder billionaire Jack Ma. Shares of Alibaba have risen 7 percent since the beginning of this week, but have fallen for other Chinese Internet giants. The Alibaba investigation was one of the initial "shots" in the campaign, which apparently aims to cut off the power of major Chinese Internet companies. It was triggered by last year's criticism of regulatory authorities by Jack Ma. His comments triggered an unprecedented offensive by regulators, including halting the initial public offering of financial company Ant, Alibaba's daughter, last December.