Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings has become the target of a fresh anti-monopoly complaint to regulators, this time from a supplier of smart vehicle technology and a General Motors China venture. The supplier, Shanghai-based PATEO, in a statement accused Tencent of abusing its messaging app’s dominant market position to restrict sales of its products. PATEO offers voice recognition features and other mobile applications that rely on Tencent’s multipurpose super app WeChat . The company said Tencent has been asking car companies to stop using its Internet of Vehicles products since August 2020. Shenzhen-based Tencent refuted the accusations in a statement posted on its official WeChat account on Tuesday. It said the company filed a lawsuit against PATEO in September last year for alleged trademark infringement and unfair competition. PATEO‘s app, developed in 2019, accessed users’ sensitive data on WeChat, including their contact list and chat history without authorisation from either the users or Tencent, according to the statement. It said the featured functionalities of that app could endanger driver safety. Tencent also indicated that PATEO and the GM venture have publicly marketed its app using the trademarks of WeChat, which misleads users and partners. “Tencent and its products follow the notion of fair competition and open cooperation when providing services to our users and third-party products,” the company said. “The malicious publicity stunts on monopoly should not be a shield for infringement.” The GM venture with state-owned SAIC Motor Corp , which jointly submitted the request with PATEO, did not immediately reply to a request for comment. China antitrust: Beijing court accepts ByteDance’s US$14 million lawsuit against Tencent The new complaint comes just a week after ByteDance-owned Douyin , the sister app of TikTok , accused Tencent of monopolistic behaviour and filed suit in a Beijing court, seeking 90 million yuan (US$14 million) in compensation. Tencent has described that claim as false and said ByteDance was illegally using its users’ data. Chinese regulators have stepped up antitrust scrutiny of technology firms since December, launching an investigation into e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding as well as penalising Alibaba-backed and Tencent-backed firms for not seeking antitrust reviews for deals. Alibaba is the parent company of the South China Morning Post . Additional reporting by Iris Deng