China’s tech giants face a reckoning with the regulators 

{"text":[[{"start":12.59,"text":"Consumers occupy a peculiar role in China’s tech landscape. "},{"start":16.544,"text":"They are valued customers of the gigantic platforms such as Tencent, ByteDance and Alibaba, whose strategists try to anticipate their every need. "},{"start":24.524,"text":"But they tend to lack a collective voice, meaning it is hard to fight privacy violations or manipulative selling strategies. "}],[{"start":31.48,"text":"Consumers are also citizens: once grievances rise to a certain level, government regulators start to listen, to fend off any social disturbance. "},{"start":39.997,"text":"But this is a politically tinged process. "},{"start":42.464,"text":"Regulators want to push public opinion in the direction of their own agendas, using state propaganda. "},{"start":47.957,"text":"China’s consumer associations, which sometimes write damning reports about companies, are government-affiliated and often run by retired officials. "}],[{"start":56.78,"text":"Last week’s Consumer Day show on state television — held annually on World Consumer Rights Day — is an important marker of where public opinion and political sentiment line up. "},{"start":66.547,"text":"This year, half the show was an investigative report into the use of facial recognition cameras by high-street shops, which were capturing the data without consent. "}],[{"start":75.98,"text":"While it may be surprising to someone outside China, this broadcast was the natural conclusion to two trends that have emerged over the past few years: increased consumer awareness of data protection and growing government regulation of companies’ use of data. "}],[{"start":89.73,"text":"The benefits of this to consumers are obvious: everyone in China remembers the mid-2010s, when phone numbers were traded easily and spam calls were frequent. "}],[{"start":98.76,"text":"Now antitrust regulation looks to be the next big trend in policymaking, as the Chinese Communist party (CCP) begins to turn its focus from growth figures to more balanced development. "},{"start":109.239,"text":"Over the past six months, China’s antitrust regulator, the State Administration for Market Regulation, has gone from ignoring the booming tech industry to criticising companies including Meituan and Tencent. "}],[{"start":null,"text":"

‘Buy groceries for a penny’ was the pitch from delivery giants Meituan, Alibaba and other platforms that joined the fray. Then the crackdown followed

"}],[{"start":120.91,"text":"Last November, the agency issued draft measures to cover the platform economy, bringing to an end the era of Chinese tech giants operating unchecked. "},{"start":129.402,"text":"And in December, the agency began an investigation into Jack Ma’s Alibaba ecommerce platform, a month after the government halted the IPO of Ma’s fintech giant Ant Group. "}],[{"start":139.53,"text":"But this time the benefits for consumers, who seem caught between tech giants and the government, are not immediately obvious. "},{"start":146.13400000000001,"text":"The first big fight the regulators picked is indicative of this tension: in December, the target of their ire was online platforms’ “group-buying” schemes, which allow Chinese households to do what they universally love: band together to buy discount groceries. "}],[{"start":160.62,"text":"“Buy groceries for a penny” was the pitch from delivery giants Meituan, Alibaba and many other platforms that joined the fray. "},{"start":167.59900000000002,"text":"People on social media flocked to try it, with one much-shared post detailing how an enterprising shopper had spent Rmb2,000 (about $310) on fancy seafood and received twice what she paid for. "},{"start":180.25400000000002,"text":"I’m not sure if the post went viral for its audacity or for the mouthwatering descriptions of every item in the bill. "}],[{"start":187.09,"text":"Then the crackdown followed. "},{"start":189.082,"text":"The regulator told the group-buying platforms to stop their sharp discounts. "},{"start":193.337,"text":"The era of cheap king crab was over — for now. "}],[{"start":197.36,"text":"Public opinion wavered, though most posts on the Weibo microblogging platform seemed to support the government’s decision. "},{"start":203.78900000000002,"text":"By flooding the market with subsidies, the giants were hurting the street retailers and would eventually have to raise prices for customers — in Chinese slang, “harvesting the chives”. "},{"start":213.20700000000002,"text":"But the tactic works because consumers love it, so far at least. "}],[{"start":217.88000000000002,"text":"Seafood obsession aside, there is a deeper issue at stake for China’s consumers in the rollout of antitrust enforcement: how can their voices be heard, rather than just regulators’ propaganda or tech giants’ lobbying? "},{"start":229.79700000000003,"text":"As a lawyer friend remarked: “So cheap groceries aren’t OK today. "},{"start":233.65200000000002,"text":"What won’t be OK tomorrow? ”"},{"start":235.50700000000003,"text":"She was speaking of the arbitrariness and opacity of legal enforcement. "},{"start":239.46200000000002,"text":"In a country where tech giants have run rampant for years, where existing legislation is not fit for the era of platform tech, antitrust regulators now have a lot to sort out. "}],[{"start":249.68000000000004,"text":"There’s no shame in China joining the ranks of countries that have no idea how to properly regulate their tech giants. "},{"start":255.80900000000003,"text":"But I hope for an educated discourse among China’s consumers, and citizens, about how to do so — rather than it being left solely to the CCP. "}],[{"start":264.75000000000006,"text":"Yuan Yang is the FT’s deputy Beijing bureau chief "}],[{"start":268.09000000000003,"text":""}]],"url":"https://creatives.ftacademy.cn/album/001091920-1616651589.mp3"}