The Wall Street Journal quoted sources on Thursday (11th) as reporting that a senior Tencent executive was detained by the Chinese authorities for bribing a former senior Chinese law enforcement official. On the other hand, Shanghai PATEO Internet of Vehicles and SAIC-GM-Wuling have submitted anti-monopoly documents to the State Administration of Market Supervision in response to Tencent’s suspected monopoly.
Affected by bad news, as of 11:20 am, Tencent ADR (TCEHY-US) Fell 0.041% to a temporary report of 97.75 USD. As for Hong Kong stocks, Tencent (700-HK) oscillated down 0.7% on Thursday, temporarily trading at HK$755.5 per share.
Tencent issued an “anti-fraud notice” in early February. In addition to strictly investigating the bribery of its own employees, it also listed 37 companies involved in the case on the blacklist and will no longer cooperate in the future.
Regarding the rare case of public bribery, foreign media analysis pointed out that the Beijing authorities have been increasingly tough on investigating illegal affairs between government officials and senior corporate officials. In one year since Xi Jinping ordered the implementation of anti-corruption activities, more than 1.5 million government officials have been sanctioned.
On the other hand, Douyin only recently accused Tencent of abusing its market position, requesting the court to rule that Tencent should immediately stop restricting users from sharing Douyin content through WeChat and QQ, and compensate for economic losses.
Immediately afterwards, Shanghai PATEO and SAIC-GM-Wuling jointly submitted anti-monopoly documents to the State Administration of Market Supervision on Tencent’s suspected monopoly.
Shanghai PATEO and SAIC-GM-Wuling stated that Tencent has abused its dominant position in the instant messaging market and put pressure on automakers to directly determine that Shanghai PATEO’s IoV products with WeChat functionality cannot be traded with automakers. This action constitutes an “anti-monopoly”. The abuse of market dominance prohibited by the Law should be prohibited.
Tencent pointed out that the company’s products follow the concept of fair competition and open cooperation to provide services for users and third-party products. “Malicious hype monopoly” should not become a shield for infringement.
At present, this anti-monopoly incident is under review. If the case is successfully filed, it will be the first anti-monopoly case in which a Chinese science and technology innovation enterprise and the automobile industry have jointly confronted the leading Chinese Nettech.
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