Chinese central bank boss vows to further fintech crackdownYi Gang's comments come after a year in which China has cracked down on a range of industries including technology and propertyBEIJING - China will strengthen supervision of the online payments industry and continue its anti-monopoly crackdown, the governor of the central bank said, indicating Beijing will press ahead with a regulatory crackdown on the country's technology giants. Authorities have for about a year targeted a range of homegrown tech behemoths, including e-commerce titan Alibaba and food delivery giant Meituan, for alleged monopolistic practices and aggressive harvesting of consumer data. He added that the central bank will strengthen supervision of the payments industry and ask all financial services companies to be licensed. "Top platform companies in China have acquired massive data from users," said Yi, adding that their "winner-takes-all nature ... could lead to market monopoly and compromise innovation efficiency". Ma's business empire has been targeted in a wider crackdown on tech firms aimed at breaking monopolies and strengthening data security, which has wiped billions off companies' valuations.

Source: Bangkok Post October 08, 2021 04:18 UTC