BEIJING (Reuters) – The Chinese market regulator on Friday said it has fined 12 companies in connection with 10 deals that engaged in illegal monopolistic behavior.
The companies include Baidu Inc, Tencent Holdings, Didi Chuxing, SoftBank and a ByteDance-backed company, the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) said in a statement Friday.
The companies were each fined 500,000 yuan ($ 77,000) for conduct that caused market concentration but did not exclude all competition from other companies, SAMR said.
Tencent said in a statement it would actively correct the operations and report to the regulator in a timely manner in future cases.
ByteDance said a joint venture between the affiliate and Shanghai Dongfang Newspaper Co Ltd, both of which were fined, was never in effect and the joint venture was dissolved in January.
Baidu, Didi and SoftBank did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
China has tightened scrutiny of its internet giants in recent months, citing concerns about monopolistic behavior and possible violation of consumer rights.
The regulator has fined Alibaba, Tencent-backed China Literature and other companies for failing to properly report deals on antitrust reviews. It also fined the company involved in an auto-related deal on Thursday.
Reporting by Yingzhi Yang, Cheng Leng, Pei Li, Yilei Sun and Tony Munroe; Adaptation by Christian Schmollinger, Karishma Singh and Lincoln Feast.