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Beijing tightens grip on Big Tech titans in drive for ‘healthy’ internet economy
- New regulations in China bring tighter scrutiny of internet giants like Tencent and ByteDance, joining a global attitude shift regarding Big Tech
- Practices like fake traffic numbers and algorithmic price discrimination are being targeted, shocking the tech industry
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For a few weeks earlier this year, Chinese netizens’ favourite memes focused on a 69-year-old martial artist named Ma Baoguo. The self-proclaimed tai chi master went viral after an embarrassing public loss in May that resulted in Ma getting knocked out in his fight debut.
After renewed interest in Ma in November, the fun at Ma’s expense came to halt last week when state-owned media outlets criticised internet platforms for promoting the martial artist for traffic and profit, saying Ma was “poisoning” China’s values. Internet platforms responded swiftly by removing videos and topics related to Ma.
The death of Ma Baoguo memes are just one part of a wider crackdown on China’s internet companies. The country has recently made a series of major regulatory moves targeting its technology giants, signalling a shift in attitude in Beijing. Now practices that allowed some of these companies to scale – including fake traffic, differential pricing algorithms and other behaviours seen as anticompetitive – are being put under the spotlight as regulators try to rein in Big Tech.
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“I think part of the way the Chinese government approached the digital sector was a sort of wait-and-see approach,” said Rogier Creemers, a lecturer at Leiden University who focuses on China’s digital governance. “The government essentially let these companies do their thing for a bit. They didn’t kill the chicken that lays the golden eggs, because Chinese Big Tech does a lot of things that the government wants and that the government knows it can’t do itself.”
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Now the government is pushing for what it sees as a “healthy” online economy
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