{"text":[[{"start":7.45,"text":"Shares in Chinese tech groups slid on Thursday after regulators admonished some of the country’s biggest ecommerce platforms for misleading sales tactics during a major domestic shopping event."}],[{"start":19.4,"text":"The Hong Kong-listed shares of Jack Ma’s Alibaba, which runs the ecommerce platforms Taobao and Tmall, fell 5.4 per cent, while JD.com dropped 2.9 per cent."}],[{"start":31.599999999999998,"text":"State broadcaster CCTV reported that the municipal market regulator in Beijing had summoned representatives from Alibaba, JD.com and PDD Holding’s Pinduoduo as well as from short-video site Douyin and Instagram-like Xiaohongshu, which also have shopping functions."}],[{"start":49.099999999999994,"text":"The regulator said it had discovered “irregularities” including false advertising in how the platforms promoted products in the run-up to the “6.18” shopping holiday."}],[{"start":59.74999999999999,"text":"The warning is the latest example of pressure applied to internet groups to cut what Beijing regards as “involution”, or excessive cut-throat competition, in the online shopping sector."}],[{"start":70.14999999999999,"text":"China’s ecommerce groups have repeatedly raised the ire of regulators as they engaged in a brutal price and subsidy war to lure customers over the past year. In 2025, regulators called out food delivery platforms for aggressive subsidies."}],[{"start":85.35,"text":"“Irrational large-scale subsidies not only distort the market price mechanism, but some platforms even stipulate that the subsidies are borne entirely by the merchants, putting merchants in a dilemma of no traffic if they don’t lower prices, and losses if they do,” CCTV quoted Liu Xiaochun, director of the Internet Rule of Law Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences University, as saying."}],[{"start":110.85,"text":"The regulator said that both Alibaba’s Taobao, PDD’s Pinduoduo and JD.com had all promised “10bn yuan subsidy” promotions during the 6.18 shopping festival. However, all three had failed to reveal how much they had actually invested in discounts over the period, and how much they would be funded by merchants."}],[{"start":131.79999999999998,"text":"Douyin and Xiaohongshu had failed to disclose adequate information about their own 6.18 promotions, CCTV reported."}],[{"start":140.6,"text":"Jefferies analysts said in a note on Thursday that Alibaba shares had already been under pressure in recent days amid concerns that its cloud business could miss out on benefiting from a reported Rmb2tn data centre build-out in China. "}],[{"start":155.15,"text":"“The market is also concerned about the price cuts by DeepSeek and media reports . . . on possible price cuts overseas by OpenAI,” they added."}],[{"start":164.1,"text":"Alibaba’s Hong Kong-listed shares have now fallen by almost a quarter this year. "}],[{"start":169.04999999999998,"text":"Douyin-owner ByteDance, Xiaohongshu and PDD did not immediately respond to requests for comments. JD.com and Alibaba declined to comment."}],[{"start":180.14999999999998,"text":"Additional reporting by Eleanor Olcott in Beijing"}],[{"start":189.89999999999998,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1781187541_8229.mp3"}