[뉴스핌 베이징 = 최헌규 특파원] ‘Tenmao (Temall) Taobao (淘宝) Tenmao Super Heuma (盒马) Alizenkang Amor (饿了么, O2O food delivery) Peizhou (飛猪) 1688 Youku Dingding Gaorder Map ,Smartphone Map) Shared Bike Niaoqiao Logistics Alimama My Group (Zipubao Alipay) AliCloud…’
It is the core business and related business areas that Alibaba has specified in its 2020 annual financial report. It covers all areas of daily life business such as e-commerce, payment, food delivery, and entertainment media. It is no exaggeration to say that a life without a government is possible in the daily life of Chinese people 24 hours a day, but life without Alibaba (Ma Yun) is an unimaginable world.
On December 24, the authorities of China’s national market supervisory administration announced that it had entered into an antitrust investigation against the Alibaba Group. It is alleged that Alibaba (Taobao Tmall) abused its dominant position and forced merchants to choose one of Alibaba’s competitors (Jingdong Pinduo, etc.). Alibaba has confirmed that it has been notified by the supervisory authority and that it will respond to the investigation in good faith.
On the 25th, Chinese media said that this antitrust investigation by the Chinese authorities on Alibaba is a response to the growing harm of the monopoly, such as restricting the development of innovation through mutual competition due to the formidable expansion of the Alibaba business group. An Internet economy expert at the Central Finance University in Beijing said that China has a saying that’big eats small things, small things eat big’.
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| [뉴스핌 베이징 = 최헌규 특파원] On December 24th, it was reported that Alibaba was under antitrust investigation by Chinese authorities. The mascot shape is installed in the Alibaba headquarters building in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. News filming at Tenmao Soppsui Shopping Festival on November 11, 2020. 2020.12.25 [email protected] |
Since its founding in 1999, Alibaba has shown explosive business expansion. Tenmao’s share of the Chinese e-commerce market in 2019 reached 50.1%. It is ahead of the 2nd place Jingdong (26.6%) with almost a double score difference.
An Alibaba official said to a reporter who visited the Hangzhou Alibaba site during the 2020 Tan Mao Shuangshui Global Shopping Festival on November 11th, saying that the total size of China’s fashion and apparel market is about 3 trillion yuan, and sold through the Taobao Tenmao platform. He said the amount is 1 trillion yuan. Simply put, it means that nearly 500 million out of 1.4 billion Chinese people buy clothing through an Alibaba company’s Internet platform.
According to the South China Morning Post on the 24th, the total transaction volume (GMV) of the consumer-type business platform through the Ali digital economy ecosystem for one year until the end of March 2020 exceeded 1 trillion dollars for the first time in all companies in the world.
In the smartphone map app service market, Alibaba’s Gaoder Map has risen to the unrivaled No. 1 company, overtaking Baidu, which originally kept the top in this field as the prince of search engines. According to Irui Consulting, a statistical agency, Gaorder Maps already recorded 34% of the smartphone app map market share in the third quarter of 2019, slightly surpassing Baidu (31%).
China’s People’s Daily said in a commentary on the agency’s investigation on Alibaba’s antitrust activity, saying,’Competition is the cornerstone of the market economy and monopoly is the big enemy of the market economy’, emphasizing the importance of fair and normative competition among large internet platform companies.
The media explained that the antitrust investigation is for the sound and good development of the Internet platform industry, and will be a turning point for a new leap forward for Internet companies. In that it is an agency representing the Communist Party, this comment by the People’s Daily is the same as the explanation of the Chinese authorities’ position on the Alibaba antitrust investigation.
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| [뉴스핌 베이징 = 최헌규 특파원] On the wall of the Alibaba headquarters building in Zhejiang Province, China, a large mural promoting the business ecosystem of the Alibaba Group is painted. Filmed on November 11, 2020. 2020.12.25 [email protected] |
The People’s Daily reported that Internet companies contributed a lot to the high-mass development of the economy, but in recent years there have been side effects such as abuse of superior market position, restrictions on competition, farming in the price order, damage to consumer rights, and disruption of the market competition order. He emphasized that it is for correcting unfair misconduct and for the healthy development of the Internet industry.
The People’s Daily reported that platform companies seek scale and efficiency in relation to the monopoly of large groups of Internet companies, but it is not allowed even monopoly. In a fair competition environment, small companies like Alibaba have become today’s big companies. He pointed out that under a competitive mechanism, innovation in technology and business models can continue and many good companies can emerge.
Until the early 2000s, the Chinese authorities took a very cautious attitude toward supervisory and management as they actively defended the business experiment of the new Internet industry in the early stage. In China, when the antitrust law was enacted in 2008, both domestic and foreign state-owned private companies, small and medium enterprises, Internet companies and traditional companies were included as targets for fair market competition.
The People’s Daily said that the strengthening of antitrust supervisory and management of large Internet platform companies is not hurting the Internet industry, but is a measure to enable continuous innovation and development, and it has cracked down on the monopoly of IT conglomerates such as Microsoft IBM in the United States and Europe. The authorities actively covered the Alibaba antitrust investigation, saying that new Internet companies such as Google, Apple, and Facebook and Amazon could be born.
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| [뉴스핌 베이징 = 최헌규 특파원] 2020.12.25 [email protected] |
Beijing = Correspondent Heon-kyu Choi [email protected]