Since April 2021, China's market regulator, the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR), has fined several companies, including tech giant Tencent, e-commerce giant Alibaba and video-sharing platform Bilibili, for violating the anti-monopoly law. These fines signal a sustained anti-monopoly campaign that expects more active enforcement of anti-monopoly regulations with the 2022 amendment of the Anti-Monopoly Law.

Tencent was fined for irregularities pertaining to share acquisition in companies, including video and photo editing app VERSA Inc., supply chain and logistics service provider Yonghui Yunchuang Technology and application software developer IngageApp Global Limited, according to the SAMR website. For example, the SAMR imposed a fine on Tencent for not reporting its acquisition of an online wine retailing company based in South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Tencent completed the acquisition in November 2020 along with another investment company. Tencent was also fined for concealing its acquisition of a Beijing-based delivery company from anti-monopoly regulators.

In April 2021, SAMR imposed a record penalty of 18.23 billion yuan on Alibaba after determining that the company had abused its market position over the course of several years. The SAMR claimed that Alibaba had forbidden businesses on its platforms to open online shops on other platforms deemed as competitors by Alibaba. Those shops are also banned from participating in other online platforms' promotional campaigns. Merchants that didn't comply with these rules were punished by the company, such as disqualifying them from launching promotional activities and diminishing their access to consumer searches.

According to the effective 2022 Amendment to the Anti-monopoly Law of China (AML) and the Guidelines of the Anti-monopoly Commission of the State Council for Anti-monopoly in the Field of Platform Economy (Guidelines of Platform Economy), please comment on the below topics:

QUESTION

Alibaba was fined for its abusive conduct with a dominant market position in breach of the AML and the Guidelines of Platform Economy, please specify the related articles at issue and provide your ideas of this fine regarding the facts, issues, rationales, etc.