China has fined Alibaba , Tencent and Baidu for antitrust violations.
Some of China's largest technology companies have come under scrutiny from the country's regulators.
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According to a statement from the government agency State Administration of Market Regulation (SAMR), Alibaba , Tencent, Baidu and other companies were fined over the weekend for violating antitrust laws .
SAMR listed 43 separate violations, with some of them dating back to 2012. The penalty for each violation is 500,000 yuan ($78,000).
“The cases announced this time are transactions/agreements, which should have been declared but were not declared in the past,” SAMR said in its statement.
Regulators in China have been cracking down on major Chinese tech companies for about a year. The country has been tightening controls on online platforms, arguing that they risk abusing market power. The companies are abusing their power to undermine competition, misappropriate consumer data and violate consumer rights.
See also: Amazon: Accused of misleading the antitrust commission
The fines announced on Saturday are small compared to other sanctions imposed earlier this year. For example, Alibaba was fined 18.2 billion yuan ($2.8 billion). At that time, the company was again accused of violating antitrust laws. Specifically, regulators said the e-commerce company was behaving like a monopoly.
Shares of Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu fell slightly after the fine was announced, with Baidu seeing the biggest drop of the three.
A few words about Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu
Tencent is a Chinese multinational conglomerate engaged in various activities in the technology sector. It was founded in 1998 and its subsidiaries worldwide offer various Internet-related services and products, including entertainment, artificial intelligence, and other technologies .
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Alibaba Group Holding Limited, also known as Alibaba Group and Alibaba.com, is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in e-commerce, retail, the Internet, and technology.
Baidu is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet and artificial intelligence (AI) -related services and products
Source: CNN International
