Alibaba and Internet Finance in China
Posted: 1 Apr 2017
Date Written: March 29, 2017
Abstract
With the official promulgation of the “Internet Plus” plan in 2015, China has opened up many of its previously tightly regulated industries for private Internet companies to enter, including the strategic banking and financial sector – a sector that has long been dominated by state-owned banks. China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba, relying upon its large collections of consumer and business data, has been one of the pioneers in this front. The company’s efforts in articulating with state’s initiatives to aggressively expand its reach into China’s financial industry, however, has not been a smooth process. The security concerns of different government agencies, the vested interests of large state-owned banks, and the company’s own extensive linkage with transnational capital have continued to create frictions.
Drawing on a systematic review of state policies, corporate documents, trade journals, and news articles, as well as interviews with industrial practitioners in China, this paper offers a case study of Alibaba’s recent entry into China’s strategic financial sector. By focusing on three highly visible cases in Alibaba’s new adventures – the Alipay drama in 2011, the Yu’ebao dispute in 2013 and the establishment of the Internet bank MYbank in 2015, it provides some preliminary observations of the complex state-capital interactions that have structured China’s digital revolution during the “Internet Plus” era.
This paper argues, if the Yu’ebao dispute in 2013 indicates that there were divergent visions and serious power struggles inside the state apparatus in terms of how to build an Internet-based financial sector, the still-limited business scope of MYBank in 2015 reveals the tensions between the security concerns of the Chinese state and the expansive objectives of its domestic Internet companies. Moreover, the drama around Alipay, and the more recently released Foreign Investment Draft Law, have further complicated the issue as the Chinese state seems to have started to curb the influence of transnational investment in its domestic digital market.
As the “Internet Plus” initiative continues to grant private Internet companies unprecedented freedom to operate in many of China’s most strategic and sensitive industries, Alibaba’s recent Internet finance adventures – as analyzed in this paper – offer revealing policy insights into the ongoing and future restructuring of China’s digital economy.
Keywords: China, Internet Finance, Internet plus, Alibaba, Case Study
JEL Classification: L86
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation