China’s tech crackdown will see ‘more substantial progress’ by year’s end, Beijing vows

Economic uncertainties and shrinking GDP growth also prompt warning on financial risks, while a raft of moves are being reviewed to help struggling businesses

President Xi Jinping again stresses the importance of curbing monopolies and preventing the disorderly expansion of capital

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President Xi Jinping has reiterated that China must prevent monopolies and the disorderly expansion of capital. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 9:00pm, 20 Oct 2021Updated: 11:32pm, 20 Oct 2021

Chinese authorities say progress is being made in their efforts to clean up the financial irregularities created by privately run tech giants and other industrial capitalists, while doubling down on vows to ensure that funding is available to struggling private businesses amid rising costs and a broad economic slowdown.

Guo Shuqing, party chief of the People’s Bank of China, pointed to promising “initial results” in the ongoing clampdown on tech giants, in an interview that Communist Party mouthpiece Xinhua published on Tuesday.

“Financial regulatory departments raised more than 1,000 issues, most of which received an active response,” he was quoted as saying. “About half of them have been tackled.

“There will be more substantial progress by the end of this year.”

Beijing has been cracking down on Big Tech for several months, in line with the country’s efforts to prevent monopolies and the disorderly expansion of capital – a mission thatwas again stressed by President Xi Jinping at a Tuesday meeting of the Politburo.

The fresh comments by Guo, who is also chairman of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, came as market worries have resurfaced over the financial stability and future of the private economy, which employs 80 per cent of the urban workforce and accounts for 60 per cent of the national gross domestic product (GDP).

Meanwhile, China’s financial regulators have promised more financing support for the private economy. This comes as third-quarter GDP growth dropped to 4.9 per cent from 7.9 per cent in the second quarter, and as September’s producer price index rose to a record high of 10.7 per cent from a year earlier.