Why Big Tech Should Worry: Next China

Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, Baidu and Didi — a panoply of big tech in China — have all been punished in recent months for anti-monopoly violations. The events of this past week suggest there’s more to come.

The loudest signal of that came from President Xi Jinping. At a meeting of the Communist Party’s committee overseeing economic and financial affairs, Xi emphasized the need to better regulate “platform” companies, a term Beijing has begun to use that encapsulates the country’s biggest tech firms. A readout from that meeting also noted there would be efforts to boost fair competition, fight monopolies and prevent the disorderly expansion of capital.