Competition violations: Beijing warns 34 platform companies

On Tuesday, Beijing warned 34 internet platform companies against continuing to engage in prohibited practices that restrict competition. The State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) met with the companies, including Tencent, ByteDance, and JD.com, and ordered them to conduct internal inspections within a month. Practices such as excluding merchants who also offer their goods on other platforms are to be stopped. Persistent violations of competition practices could face severe penalties, Bloomberg reports. Only on Saturday, the competition authority had imposed a record fine of €2.3 billion against Alibaba.