A Case Study of Ant Finance's Innovation Journey from a Platform Economy
Résumé
During the spring of 2021, the Chinese government profoundly changed its relationship with large digital platforms; the government had decided to strengthen their supervision, fight against monopolies, and promote fair competition. Until then, technology giants such as Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, and JD.Com dominated a fast-growing market, especially in China, where Fintech represented a very important part of the retail market among middle-class consumers. Various political and economic reasons can be provided for this choice. This paper showcases the economic power of the two-sided markets approach of these platforms today and describes the late but violent reaction of the Chinese government, worried about its economic and monetary sovereignty.