Dr Jing Li
5 August 2026
Recently, Trip.com, a Mainland tourism platform giant, was fined RMB 5.179 billion by Chinese regulators for suspected profiting from its market dominance, becoming a hot topic of public debate. The reason for the fine imposed on Trip.com is that the group forced hotels to sign clauses such as “exclusive cooperation” and “lowest price across the entire network” that are exclusive or effectively exclusive in nature. This restricted hotels from engaging in normal cooperation and competition on other platforms, and the group used tools such as traffic ranking and promotional resources to penalize non-compliant partners. Such behaviour is detrimental to the interests of competitors and hotels and breached China’s antitrust laws. On the other hand, offline hotels and home-stay lodgings are facing increasing pressure on their survival, with profits plummeting. Hence, this astronomical fine did not come as a surprise.
The Trip.com incident is not an isolated case in China’s antitrust field. In 2021, Alibaba was fined RMB 18.228 billion for abusing market dominance by preventing its merchants from using competing platforms. Later on, food delivery platform Meituan received an antitrust fine of several billion yuan for similar exclusive cooperation clauses and algorithmic strategies. These incidents point to the same thing—once a leading platform commands massive user traffic, data, and technological advantages, it has both the capacity and the incentive to sway the normal competitive order by means of “hidden tactics”, for example contract clauses, platform rules, and algorithms. This not only harms consumers and competitors alike, but also creates a negative impact on the healthy development of the industry and employment. With these factors in mind, the massive fine on Trip.com, together with a series of similar precedent cases, could become a milestone in the Chinese government’s clampdown on monopolies, thereby ushering in a new phase of forceful antitrust action against big companies and major platforms. Apart from the harms caused by monopolistic practices, this conclusion is based on the following three factors.
Economic weakness and intensifying monopolies worsen the plight of small businesses, running counter to macro objectives
The Trip.com case occurred against the broader backdrop of a significant slowdown in the Chinese economy, insufficient domestic demand, and pressure on confidence in some sectors. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) often face more direct and acute pressure than large corporations: difficulty in securing financing, high costs, unstable demand, and any additional shock related to market order may become the last straw.
Take the online hotel booking industry as an example. If a leading platform requires hotels to offer the “best rates” that are unavailable to other platforms, hotels will not only be subject to higher platform commissions and operational requirements and have to accept reduced rates, but will also lose the opportunity to diversify risks across platforms and secure better terms. Small and medium hotels are forced to take sides and accept the lowest rates, thereby significantly reducing their profitability, while pushing up their operational risks. The decline in hotel profitability would further affect downstream suppliers, exerting a negative impact on a wider range of small and medium enterprises.
From a broader perspective, the Mainland’s current policy focus is on stabilizing growth, safeguarding employment, and maintaining market confidence to prevent a sharp economic slowdown. Should the competitive order be distorted by monopolies, a large number of SMEs will have their profits squeezed or be forced to exit the market. Companies that should have driven innovation and job creation would instead become a drag, and the policy would fail to achieve its intended purpose. In this sense, antitrust is not merely about fine-tuning micro rules; it is also a form of macro-level regulation and optimization aimed at preventing the economic structure from becoming “top-heavy” and unbalanced.
Small companies contribute more to employment and monopolistic exclusion directly creates employment risk
Drawing on numerous international studies and China’s official statistics, SMEs tend to make a higher marginal contribution to the creation of jobs. According to studies by the World Bank and the International Labour Organization, in most countries SMEs provide more than half or even over 70% of employment, and are thus the main source of new jobs. Empirical studies by economists such as Meghana Ayyagari, Thorsten Beck, and Asli Demirgüç–Kunt also show that, compared with large companies, SMEs are more labour-intensive, and can generate more jobs per unit of output.
At present, China’s employment market is under considerable pressure and the Chinese government has repeatedly emphasized that “small and medium enterprises are the main channel for absorbing employment”. Monopolistic conduct squeezes the operating space of numerous SMEs, thereby narrowing the buffer space for overall employment. Take the Trip.com case, for example. If its monopolistic behaviour causes other online tourism platforms to lose competitive opportunities, this would make growth difficult for small travel agencies and local tourism platforms. Also affected would be the income and job opportunities of local tour guides, hotel service staff, transport drivers, offline small merchants, etc. Once this pressure accumulates across multiple industries, it may translate into higher unemployment rates, greater risk of structural unemployment, and more serious regional disparities. Therefore, with “stabilizing employment” as the policy objective, the significance of antitrust lies not only in law enforcement per se, but also in creating buffer space for employment and social stability by protecting SMEs.
Building a fair and effective competitive order within the national planning framework
The imposition of the hefty fine on Trip.com should also be understood within the strategic framework of national medium- to long-term development. The Outline of the 14th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development and the Long-Range Objectives Through the Year 2035 clearly lays out the goals of improving the socialist market economy system; strengthening the fair competition framework; enhancing antitrust efforts and preventing the disorderly expansion of capital; as well as fostering a market-oriented, law-based, and internationalized business environment. This shows that the central decision-makers value fair competition: despite the importance of the development of capital and large platforms given their efficiency advantage, it is essential for them to operate within the legal framework, without overriding market rules to the detriment of the legitimate rights of other companies and consumers.
Therefore, bolstering the enforcement of antitrust laws is part of the implementation of the central government’s policy, undertaking multiple functions. First, communicating a clear message to the market that advantages in size and technology do not constitute immunity. Any company that abuses its market position must bear the legal and economic costs. Second, forcing leading platforms to shift from monopolistic control to service innovation, maintaining leadership through competition based on strength rather than by suppressing competition. Third, creating a predictable environment to prevent SMEs from being forced to take sides amid information asymmetry and opaque rules, and enabling them to negotiate with multiple platforms to secure better terms. Looking ahead, beyond the 14th Five-Year Plan, the 15th Five-Year Plan and even longer-term plans are expected to take high-quality development as their guiding principle, on the premise of a fair, open, and transparent market competition order; antitrust is not intended to hamper the growth of large companies, but to prevent capital from deviating from public interests and safeguard overall market efficiency and fairness.
From the Trip.com fine to a new market landscape of high-quality development
The heavy penalty on Trip.com is, on the surface, a high-profile antitrust case involving the platform economy. In essence, however, it is a microcosm of China’s new phase of exploring the balance between “scale and fairness, efficiency and employment”, and also reflects the current policy objectives of stabilizing economic growth and jobs. While the growth and expansion of large companies is important to technological innovation and international competitiveness, if this growth is built on exclusive control, suppression of SMEs, and undermining of fair competition, it will ultimately compromise market vitality, innovation momentum, and social stability. Therefore, the Central Government is expected to enhance its antitrust efforts in order to maintain an efficient and fair market competition environment. What the antitrust policy is targeting is not the size of corporations, but the illegal profiteering behaviour brought about by monopolies.
Seen from this perspective, the astronomical fine on Trip.com is not only a stern warning, but also represents the self-evolution of the market regulatory system. How to strike a balance between encouraging the development of the platform economy to boost efficiency and preventing the damage caused by monopolies will, over a relatively long period in the future, continue to test the wisdom of the Mainland regulatory authorities and their regulatory capability. What can be basically confirmed is that China will continue to step up its antitrust efforts against large companies and large platforms. In this new antitrust environment, large corporations also need to adjust their business models and operate rationally and legally.
