According to the New York Times billionaire Jack Ma – China’s most famous businessman – is away from the limelight. Close people revealed that he spent his time painting and practicing tai chi. The Chinese government is bringing a series of technology corporations into sight. The enormous wealth and influence of these businesses are said to be beyond the limit. Jack Ma, Alibaba e-commerce conglomerate and fintech (finance and technology) company Ant Group are Beijing’s biggest targets. European and American authorities have been trying to tighten control of the tech giants for years. However, they cannot make a big difference like what happened to the Alibaba founder in China. The Chinese government insists that businesses must commit to placing social stability above profits. Tencent founder Pony Ma (left) and billionaire Jack Ma at an event in Beijing in 2018. Photo: New York Times. The unprecedented “punishment” campaign The Beijing government is not just tightening the control of Alibaba. Ant Group CEO Simon Hu resigned in March. Just a few days later, Pinduoduo founder Colin Huang stepped down as chairman. Also in March, at a meeting, Tencent founder Pony Ma proposed stricter rules for Internet businesses, including Tencent. He also has a “voluntary meeting” with the country’s antitrust agencies. Last week, China’s antitrust agency summoned top 34 Internet companies to discuss new rules of fair competition. The discussion revolves around changes in business. Companies are committed to taking it seriously. “The new rules will require Internet platforms to look back on how they innovate in the future. And as a result there will be less innovation,” said Gordon Orr, a board member of Meituan, company. Chinese food delivery, comment. However, New York Times The Beijing government will not be too heavy on Alibaba and other Chinese Internet corporations. Even as tightening oversight, Beijing still praised the group’s contributions to the economy. Pinduoduo founder Colin Huang stepped down from his chair as the company’s chairman. Photo: New York Times. Chinese President Xi Jinping wants the economy to be driven by innovation from Chinese tech corporations, instead of big foreign ones. “It may be too early to declare that Jack Ma has failed”, New York Times comment. “To the success and performance of the Chinese economy, Alibaba is more important than any other business,” commented Richard McGregor of the Lowy Institute. “The Chinese authorities want to continue reaping the benefits of Jack Ma’s company, but on their terms. Beijing doesn’t nationalize Alibaba. The company is just narrowing its operations.” “Alibaba has a perfect opportunity to grow into a world-class company,” said Wang Guoping, an official in Hangzhou city (where Alibaba is located), in the 2000s. “What a world-class company needs most is a soul, a leader, a world-class businessman. I believe Jack Ma meets those standards, “he added. Change your attitude According to Porter Erisman, one of Alibaba’s first executives, in the 2000s, most employees at Alibaba were just trying to make a lot of money. Jack Ma alone had another concern. He fears that one day the company will become too big. And Alibaba could be under pressure for holding huge market power. In 2011, Jack Ma understood that his ambitions could make regulators dissatisfied. Ma quietly took over Alipay – Alibaba’s payment service. That move angered one of Alibaba’s biggest shareholders – Yahoo -. However, according to Jack Ma, that is the action needed to meet the new Chinese regulations. Alipay later became Ant Group. As Alibaba grew, Jack Ma began meeting presidents and movie stars admired by many Chinese businessmen. “That changed the views of Jack Ma about himself and the Chinese government,” said Duncan Clark, Chairman of BDA China, commented. Mr. Simon Hu, CEO of Ant Group, resigned in March. Photo: New York Times. When Jack Ma stepped down as Alibaba chairman in 2019, a Chinese state-run newspaper commented: “There is no such thing as the Jack Ma era, only Jack Ma is part of this era.” Chinese leaders need the private sector to sustain economic growth. However, they do not want this area to exert too much influence on society. In October 2020, when Ant was preparing to go public (IPO), Jack Ma criticized Chinese financial regulators at a conference in Shanghai. He describes the Chinese banking system “operates like a pawnshop.” Shortly after, Ant’s IPO was ordered to be canceled. The Chinese government wants to continue reaping the benefits of Mr. Ma’s company, but on their terms Richard McGregor, senior fellow at the Lowy Institute “In China, it is difficult to say that the emperor is not dressed,” commented Kellee S. Tsai at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, referring to the short story “The Emperor’s New Clothes”. Mr. Ma has also rarely appeared since then. According to the source of the New York Times , in January, he showed up for an internal chat. The staff then shared Mr. Ma’s message to reassure everyone. Recently, the Hurun Report team (based in Shanghai) estimated that for the first time after 3 years, Mr. Ma was not among the three richest people in China. First place belongs to Mr. Zhong Shanshan, a well-known billionaire behind a group of famous bottled water and pharmaceutical companies.

At times, many places across the country were flooded with information about sophisticated tricks to “hide the ball” of multi-level business. At that time, the wave of multi-level sales such as octopus spouts, crept into every corner in many rural areas, stirred the already very peaceful lives of the people here. Because of the desire to be rich, many people have spent money to multilevel and then fall into the trap of scams that the family goes bankrupt.

But the multi-level “tornado” is still nothing compared to the “fever” of virtual land.

Artwork: Ha Giang

These days, real estate prices in many provinces are increasing “rapidly”, creating a “fever” of land, especially in rural areas. Provinces and cities such as Hanoi, Thanh Hoa, Quang Ninh, Bac Ninh … land prices in suburban areas have doubled or even tripled in just a few months. In many places, people quit production and business to carry money to trade land.

The land fever not only occurs in the planned areas but also occurs in locations that are not under the planning such as: forest land, field land, garden … “Storks” appear everywhere in the area. These areas create false excitement, pushing prices up every hour to entice investors in. For example, outside of Hanoi, there are areas that increase the price from 5 million / m2 to 7 million / m2 in just one day….

In general across the country, the average land price increases 10% -15% after 1 month. With such attractive profits, many people quit their businesses, their production, and withdraw money from banks to invest in land.

Everywhere, everywhere, people talked about land prices. This story appears in the whole meal, the people’s sleep makes life turn upside down, work stops.

Prescribe root treatment

According to many opinions, the low interest rate of credit plus the idle money of the people makes a large capital pouring into real estate, creating a virtual “fever” in the suburban areas.

This is not the first time the appearance of “fever” of soil. So the question is where is the managerial responsibility of the authorities, especially the responsibility of the local government?

The local government – where the land “fever” occurs, cannot ignore this situation because it will make a big obstacle to calling for and attracting formal investment. In fact, the increase in land prices will lead to a series of other costs increasing, especially the cost of compensation for site clearance … Thus, it will affect economic development in localities with ” fever “soil. Consequences of the land price increase will also reduce investment resources for production development in many other sectors and fields of the country.

Therefore, the local government needs to promote propaganda and explain to the people the serious consequences of the land “fever”, which will certainly limit a lot of speculation.

Commenting on this issue, Professor Dang Hung Vo – former Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment, said that the “fever” situation of land everywhere over time is partly due to the impact of the 2013 Land Law. regulations on sub-plots for sale are expanded.

According to him, countries around the world use the form of subdivision for sale only to settle urban housing, not in commerce because in principle, the real estate market must exploit the value of the investment. land, not waiting for land price increases to make a profit as a form of “eating away”.

Professor Dang Hung Vo pointed out, from 2016 to 2020, the Government has instructed four times to amend the Land Law, however, up to now the Land Law has not been revised. In particular, the land is clogged with old regulations. For example, current agricultural land has not yet implemented effective accumulation and concentration. Along with that is the land transfer in the countryside almost not according to the procedure but mainly by handwriting. Then the problem of housing development nowadays also has many bottlenecks … Especially the problem of foreigners buying underground land in Vietnam … It is these shortcomings that have a direct impact on the real estate market, making distorting and manipulating the market, creating opportunities for those who have the opportunity to make money.

Therefore, Professor Dang Hung Vo emphasized that the revision of the Land Law is extremely necessary.

Along with that, according to experts’ view, in the context that lending interest rates are pouring heavily on real estate, the State Bank needs to closely monitor and supervise lending activities to prevent loans to production and business, but actually poured into real estate.

The controversial “choose 1 in 2” strategy in the past five years in China has finally become qualitative in imposing monopolistic business practices, and Alibaba has become the first “victim” to gender. This country’s official “stunned”.

Penalties of up to 18,288 billion yuan ($ 2.8 billion) issued by China’s State Market Supervision Department against Alibaba account for 4% of the group’s 2019 revenue.

The group of billionaire Jack Ma has continuously encountered bad luck in recent times.

Not merely a punishment, the meaning of the case went far beyond its original purpose. This is said to be a warning to the entire Internet industry in China, and the move also shows Beijing is accelerating its war of antitrust against big tech companies.

Alibaba: “Big trees catch the wind”

In fact, legal disputes over Alibaba’s monopoly conduct have long existed. Starting in November 2015, Alibaba’s “choose 1 in 2” policy under Jack Ma was accused of disrupting the e-commerce market and many platforms repeatedly called for a boycott of this behavior.

It was not until December 2020 that the State Market Administration of China conducted the first antitrust investigation and a final decision was made. Basically, Alibaba immediately expressed its attitude to cooperate with the authorities. “We recognize that today’s penalty is a warning and motivating us, it is a standard and concern for the industry’s development,” an Alibaba representative said in the Letter. customers and the public.

In the opinion of many market analysts, that penalty is inherently beneficial for Alibaba, because conservative policies in recent years have made them gradually lag in e-commerce. This also allows the Internet economic platform to re-focus on sustaining innovation, instead of relying on dominant positions to “protect” the market. More importantly, the warning for Alibaba will form a strong competitive advantage in the market in the future.

Other platforms started to be wary

In addition to warning Alibaba, the penalty serves as a deterrent to the entire Chinese internet industry. After all, the problem of monopoly is not limited to just one platform and with the current scale of operations, it is completely understandable that Alibaba is being targeted first.

Over the years, the platform economy has benefited from the rapid growth and popularity of the Internet. Based on the cumulative effect, the platforms quickly formed certain areas, especially e-commerce. Up to a certain stage, natural monopoly properties will arise and the larger the platform scale, the more obvious the advantage.

However, “if the platforms misuse this advantage, leading to the formation of unfair competition, the behavior is suspected to be illegal”, the punishment that the Administration Department oversees. China has proved it. Realizing the risk, many leading e-commerce platforms such as Taobao, Tmall, JD, 1688 … started to change policies to avoid becoming the next victim of the regulator.

The Internet antitrust campaign in China is accelerating

“This time Alibaba was fined and signaled that relevant departments had tightened antitrust oversight of the platform economy. I believe there will be other antitrust enforcement cases in the future, not just this one, “said a researcher at the Center for Intellectual Property Research, University of Political Science and Law.

In addition, strengthening antitrust and preventing capital expansion causing market disruption is also the Chinese government’s consistent attitude, which was specifically mentioned at the Central Economic Work Conference held. at the end of last year. However, from the development context over the years, the monopoly monitoring here still has a certain delay.

With the rapid development and changing of Internet economic platforms, law enforcement or administrative governance need to keep up with the times, forcing the Chinese authorities to speed up the antitrust war. This is expected to create fair competition and maintain standardized market vitality in the future.

Alibaba was fined $ 2.8 billion for alleged monopoly.

JD.com, Meituan and ByteDance lead China’s first group of Big Tech companies to commit to complying with the law after China Market Surveillance Agency (SAMR) asked them to “learn lessons” from Alibaba. Group Holding in Beijing’s latest antitrust investigation.

On April 14, 12 out of 34 tech companies released a public statement pledging to do business in compliance with the law after SAMR warned of Alibaba’s recent antitrust sanctions and conducted self-testing. next month.

Earlier, e-commerce giant Alibaba was fined a record $ 2.8 billion for forcing small businesses to sell exclusive products on the platform. Monopolistic behavior is understood as how businesses eliminate competition of competitors by forcing customers to choose “one of two”.

JD.com has made eight promises including “never taking measures to force sellers to choose either and never abusing a dominant market position or making any exclusive deals. “. The e-commerce group also said it will “never publish illegal advertisements and never sell products of substandard quality”.

Meituan’s delivery staff.

Meituan promised not to impose unreasonable measures forcing sellers to “choose one of the two” and would not abuse its market position to limit competition. In addition, the company is committed to providing full support to the Chinese regulatory authorities. “Once we find evidence of illegal conduct, we will report it to regulators in a timely manner and readily cooperate with any investigation,” Meituan said.

ByteDance, the owners of short video apps TikTok and Douyin, made 13 promises in its public statement. China’s most valuable unicorn company says it will “not illegally collect and misuse user data” and adhere to “minimum guidelines” in collecting data from users. E-commerce platform Pinduoduo said it will “proactively assume more social responsibility”, as well as comply with legal and regulatory requirements.

The rest of the companies are expected to announce their public commitment over the next two days

Beijing’s targeting of key Big Tech firms including Kuaishou, Bilibili and Didi Chuxing comes at a time when the Chinese government is resolutely using antitrust laws and other regulatory methods to halt. out-of-control expansion.

SAMR has accused major tech companies of misconduct such as forcing sellers to choose only one trading platform, abuse of market dominance, abuse of big data to unfair pricing. for certain customers, ignoring poor quality products, leaking customer data, and tax evasion.

“No one is allowed to cross the regulatory lines and not touch the legal red line,” SAMR said on Tuesday.

34 Internet service providers are on the spot, many of which are listed on US and Hong Kong exchanges. Companies were asked to “raise responsibility and give priority to the national interests”.

“Companies must absolutely avoid disordered capital expansion to ensure China’s economic and social security, you must absolutely avoid monopolies to ensure fair competition,” according to Beijing’s statement towards Internet service platforms.

SAMR says companies have one month to do a “self-check and self-repair”, after which the government will conduct follow-up and “severely punish” those companies that fail to address the misconduct.