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Meituan and Didi Chuxing warned by China’s pricing watchdog to protect ‘market price order’
- Meituan, Didi, and six other sharing economy platforms have 30 days to make pricing more transparent
- The pricing bureau of the country’s top market regulator slapped Zuoyebang and Yuanfudao, two leading edtech companies, with maximum fines last month
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China’s pricing watchdog, a bureau within the country’s top market regulator, summoned Meituan, Didi Chuxing and six other sharing economy platforms on Thursday for a stern reminder to toe the regulatory line in a sign of sustained regulatory scrutiny on the country’s tech sector.
The bureau told on-demand service giant Meituan, Didi Chuxing’s bike-sharing service Didi Bike, Hellobike and five power bank sharing companies including Nasdaq-listed Energy Monster to increase compliance and make their pricing rules more transparent to build a “sound market price order”, according to a statement on the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR)’s website.
SAMR said that problems including irregular pricing continue in the sharing economy and gave the companies 30 days to rectify and submit reports on how they’ve addressed pricing issues. While the pricing bureau gave “administrative guidance”, no firm was punished outright.
The lecture marks a rare case of the Price Supervision and Anti-Unfair Competition Bureau, also known as the Office for Regulating Direct Selling and Cracking Down on Pyramid Schemes, summoning China’s Big Tech, according to work logs published on its website which reveal it rarely leads regulatory summons of Big Tech.
The Anti-Monopoly Bureau and the Department of Online Transaction Regulation, two other departments within SAMR, also joined the lecture session.
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