Opinion

What is behind China’s clamp down on Big Tech, and how far will it go?

Name: Global expansion of TikTok and other Chinese tech companies is likely, only not in the West
Uploaded: 2020-12-20T22:30:12.000Z
Duration: 6 min 2 s
Description: Global expansion of TikTok and other Chinese tech companies is likely, only not in the West

Only a few years ago, Beijing was happy to encourage a new class of Chinese business titans that successfully married internet technology and private capital

But a recent squeeze on the tech giants indicates the government may have underestimated the costs of disruption – and is now scrambling to mitigate risks

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China has recently moved to reign in its big tech firms. Photo: AFP

Zhou Xin

Zhou Xin is Tech Editor of the Post, following stints as Political Economy Editor and Deputy China Editor.

Published: 6:30am, 21 Dec 2020Updated: 6:30am, 21 Dec 2020

Beijing’s determination to tame China’s big tech firms is set to have a profound impact on the country’s economic trajectory in coming years.

Questions remain about how far the government will go to clip the wings of the internet giants. But to get close to an answer, it’s worth investigating the reasons behind Beijing’s fresh scrutiny.

Only a few years ago, Beijing was touting its “four new inventions” – high-speed rail, cashless payment, online shopping and shared bikes – as modern-day equivalents to China’s ancient creations of papermaking, printing, gunpowder and the compass. Although the technology behind the new inventions was invented abroad, they were applied widely in China.

Apart from high-speed rail, the other three all resulted from the marriage of internet technology and private capital, with a few dominant players like Tencent and ByteDance emerging.

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Global expansion of TikTok and other Chinese tech companies is likely, only not in the West

The Chinese government tolerated and even encouraged these new titans – empowered by big data and artificial intelligence – and watched as they usurped traditional business processes and changed people’s day-to-day living.