Evolution of market power in China’s economic reform and its anti-monopoly policy: the case of Alibaba and Ant Financial Group

Karl Polanyi critically portrays how market practices have evolved from regulated to self-regulated at the end of the eighteenth century, which wholly changed the structure in European society thereafter. John Kenneth Galbraith elucidates how self-regulating markets have led to the expansion of corporate power which changed the sequence of the market order in twentieth century United States. In another part of the world, the development of the private sector market and expansion of corporate power in twenty-first century China and the anti-monopoly policy formulated and implemented by the Chinese government offer an alternative case to illustrate the importance of public planning and regulations in embedding markets in society. To this, I analyze and argue that the source of the growth of corporate power and its practices in China are particular to the contextual setting and process of its economic reform, which are unlike those in Europe and the United States. Specifically, empowered by the government, newly emerged Chinese e-commerce and internet finance corporations in China like Alibaba and its Ant Group have gained market power rapidly. Nevertheless, when the practices of their power evidently exceed the tolerance of the government in scope and pace of the market development in the different stages of its socialist-oriented economic reform, the government has the ultimate authority to re-institute the market behavior of these entities to ensure social good and stability.