Xi Jinping has reached out to major technology companies that the government will take even stronger action against abuse of strong market positions and that there will be even more supervision of the sector. This seems to further strengthen Beijing’s campaign to curb the tech sector. Xi attended a meeting of Senior Financial Advisers of the Communist Party on Monday. According to state channel CCTV, he said there that the Chinese government will take even harder action against monopolies of large internet companies. There will also be increased supervision of the collection of user data by tech groups, as well as of their financial activities. Only last week, it was announced that the Chinese Market Authority has fined companies, including the large Internet Group Tencent, twice for restricting competition. Investors fear that Tencent will have to place its payment service WeChat Pay in a separate company, which will then be regulated more as a bank. Previously, Ant Financial, a subsidiary of Alibaba, was not publicly traded in Hong Kong and Shanghai at the last minute due to regulatory concerns. This probably had to do with critical remarks by Alibaba founder Jack Ma about the Chinese government.
