BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s market regulator said on Friday it fined 12 companies related to 10 businesses that demonstrated illegal monopolistic behavior.
The companies included Baidu Inc, Tencent Holdings, Didi Chuxing, SoftBank and a company supported by ByteDance, the State Administration of Market Regulation (SAMR) said in a statement on Friday.
The companies were fined 500,000 yuan ($ 77,000) each for behavior that caused market concentration, but did not exclude all competition from other companies, SAMR said.
Tencent said in a statement that it would actively rectify operations and report in due course to the regulator in future cases.
ByteDance said that a joint venture between its affiliated company and Shanghai Dongfang Newspaper Co Ltd, which were fined, was never in operation and that the JV was dissolved in January.
Baidu, Didi and SoftBank did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
China has stepped up the scrutiny of its Internet giants in recent months, citing concerns about monopolistic behavior and possible violation of consumer rights.
The regulator fined Alibaba, China Literature, supported by Tencent, and other companies for failing to properly inform businesses for antitrust analysis. He also fined a company involved in an auto-related business on Thursday.
Reporting by Yingzhi Yang, Cheng Leng, Pei Li, Yilei Sun and Tony Munroe; Edited by Christian Schmollinger, Karishma Singh and Lincoln Feast.