Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, and 30 other Big Tech firms sign voluntary antitrust ‘self-discipline’ pledge at an event

Tech giants gathered at the China Internet Conference promising to maintain fair competition and prevent abuses of market position

Huawei, Baidu, JD.com and AI company iFlytek were also among the 33 signatories of the convention

Alibaba Group Holding, Tencent Holdings, and ByteDance are among 33 Chinese tech companies that have collectively signed an agreement on antitrust self-discipline amid Beijing’s growing regulatory pressure on Big Tech.

The group of tech companies, which also includes Huawei Technologies Co, Baidu, JD.com, and artificial intelligence company iFlytek, gathered at the China Internet Conference in Beijing on Tuesday and signed the convention on fair competition, consumer protection, and strengthening innovation, according to a statement on the Internet Society of China, the conference organizer.

The Internet Platform Operators Anti-Monopoly Self-discipline Convention bars tech companies from engaging in different types of monopolies, including “picking one out of two”, a practice in the e-commerce sector whereby merchants were forced to choose only one platform as their exclusive distribution channel, an issue at the center of the Alibaba antitrust investigation.

Alibaba, the owner of the South China Morning Post, was fined 18.2 billion yuan (US$2.82 billion) in April for monopolistic behaviors, while online services giant Meituan is still under an antitrust investigation.