A senior official at China’s banking regulator has warned that technological advances in the financial industry risked creating monopolies, a day after Beijing unveiled new antitrust rules for the nation’s largest internet groups.
The warning helped fuel a second day of selling of Chinese tech stocks, wiping a total of about $254bn in market value off ecommerce groups such as Alibaba, JD.com and Tencent.
“Special attention must be paid to the new risks brought about by the digital transformation [of financial services],” said Liang Tao, vice-president of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission at a forum in Beijing on Wednesday. “This is especially true with cyber security, data protection and market monopoly.”