Big Tech’s ‘walled gardens’ start to crack as Tencent vows to follow Beijing’s order to unblock links to rivals
- The crackdown on link-blocking is part of a six-month internet clean-up campaign by MIIT which began in July
- China’s internet industry has historically been characterised by ‘walled gardens’, where major companies built barriers around their ecosystems
Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings said it will follow a regulatory order to unblock online links after China’s industry ministry ordered internet companies to open up their platforms to each other, signalling the demise of Big Tech’s “walled gardens”.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has been giving guidance to internet companies as they conduct self-rectification measures to unblock external website links, and will continue to push the companies to eventually solve the problem through different steps and phases, Zhao Zhiguo, MIIT spokesman and director general of the ministry’s Information and Communications Management Bureau, said at a press conference on Monday.
“We support MIIT’s guidance and will make the necessary changes in phases,” Tencent, which operates the multipurpose super app WeChat and has long been the target of criticism for blocking links to rivals, said in a statement on Monday.
The crackdown on link-blocking is part of a six-month internet clean-up campaign by MIIT which began in July, under which Beijing has targeted industry problems including disturbances of market order, infringements of user rights, threats to data security and unauthorised internet connections. Topping the list was the industry practice of blocking and restricting access to the websites of competitors without a legitimate reason.
“Blocking website links is one of the priority issues of our campaign, and ensuring normal access to legitimate websites is a basic requirement for the development of the internet,” Zhao said on Monday, adding that the ministry has received numerous complaints on the issue.
Zhao noted that during the period of self-rectification, the MIIT had found “a gap between the awareness of some companies and the ministry’s requirement” regarding link unblocking, without naming any companies.
Moving forward, the ministry will continue to supervise the process and penalise companies that fail to complete the rectification, “in order to build an interconnected and open environment for the development of the internet industry”, said Zhao.
The move by MIIT comes amid a wider crackdown by Beijing on the country’s Big Tech companies, related to issues such as monopolistic practices, cybersecurity and consumer rights. The focus on link unblocking began this year with the MIIT campaign and a set of draft rules last month from market watchdog the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR).
China’s internet industry has historically been characterised by “walled gardens”, where major companies built barriers around their ecosystems, blocking links to the services of rivals. Tencent’s WeChat has in the past banned some external links to competitors including e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding and ByteDance.
ByteDance, owner of hit short-video sharing app TikTok and its Chinese version Douyin, has publicly attacked and even tried to sue Tencent over the practice, and links to Alibaba’s Taobao Marketplace frequently appear as obscure code. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
WeChat has said in the past that it blocks direct sharing for safety and user experience reasons, not simply to block competitors who have also blocked links to Tencent’s products.
ByteDance, for example, blocks links to WeChat as well as the live-streaming channels of JD.com.
Alibaba has called for more openness among different platforms. Alibaba chief executive Daniel Zhang said in an earnings call in August that the move would be “conducive to realising greater social value” because it would get away from the “smaller circulation that can only be achieved within the same platform”.
Tencent has previously been cautious about platform opening.
Martin Lau, president of Tencent, said last month that opening up would give rise to questions about spamming, content piracy and commercial policy issues. “We feel very complicated questions need to be discussed and resolved over time. It’s really not the most important priority for our vision,” said Lau. “We want to handle these questions in a very cautious way.”
