On the evening of July 7, the news about Ali's Ant Group being fined 7.1 billion yuan spread all over the world, which attracted widespread attention for a while, and Ali also responded to this immediately, and said that he would "sincerely accept and resolutely obey".
We know that this is not Ali's first sky-high fine, as early as 2021, Ali once issued a heavy fine of 18.2 billion yuan to Ali for "forcing merchants to choose one". So why does Ali, as an Internet giant, frequently become the object of national attention?
The cause and effect of Ali's fine
As a financial technology company under Alibaba, Ant Group has many services commonly used in everyone's daily life, such as Alipay, which we commonly use, which is a product of Ant Group. Alipay has a high popularity in life, occupying half of China's mobile payment, it can be said that Ant Group is involved in almost all aspects of life.
Such a powerful company is logically beneficial to people's lives, because many of its disruptive innovative ideas have been leading the development of Chinese science and technology, but why was it fined 7.1 billion yuan?
"We can't regulate the future the way banks do"
"It's killing innovation"
"We need to build a new financial system"
Those are the points Mr. Ma made at a financial forum that sound undoubtedly a provocation to China's regulatory system. We all know that the Chinese market will never allow any company to grow wildly without constraints, and China has never been the domain of "chaebols".
So on the second day of the forum, the People's Bank of China and several other institutions issued a working opinion, the meaning of which was also intriguing, although not named, but nine days later, Ant Group's listing plan was urgently stopped, and a full investigation and rectification was launched on them.
7.1 billion tear off Ali's fig leaf
Wearing the cloak of technology, but being a veritable financial company, this is perhaps the biggest problem of Ant Group. According to the results of the CSRC's penalties, we can see that Ant Group has certain problems in corporate governance, participation in banking and insurance, fulfillment of anti-money laundering obligations and development, fund sales, etc., and requires Ant Group to shut down the "mutual treasure" business and compensate consumers for the interests.
The starting point of Ant Group is Alipay, with the continuous growth and development of the enterprise, now third-party payment, online loans, insurance and many other financial projects are prominently listed, according to this speed, it is only a matter of time before it becomes a "full license" financial holding group.
However, when the time came to 2015, as finance began to be strictly controlled by the state, Ant Group also began to look for a new way out, and did not mention the word "finance", but always emphasized its "technology" attributes to cover up its financial ambitions.
According to the relevant information disclosed in Ali's financial report, we can know that the profits of Ant Group in 2017 basically came from consumer credit businesses such as Huabei and borrowing, and the so-called "technology" is just a cover they use to confuse the masses, and their profit point has always been finance.
What exactly is the Dharma Academy that smashed hundreds of billions in 3 years
In the final analysis, Ali is just using the coat of technology to continuously expand the financial sector, and the payment of the financial sector will inevitably lead to the neglect of the technology field. We also remember that in 2017, Jack Ma, who did not understand technology, announced that he would invest 100 billion yuan in three years to build a DAMO Academy that studies cutting-edge technologies, and threatened to reserve basic capabilities for scientific and technological innovation in the next thirty years.
Has 100 billion in 3 years really been cashed in? We all know that Damo Academy was established in 2017, but according to relevant data, Ali's total R&D investment in 5 years from 2017 to 2021 is about 170 billion, of which it also needs to be distributed to Cainiao Network, Ali Cloud, Ant Group, Damo Academy, etc., so the massage parlor itself may take 100 billion is almost nothing, but Ali has a lie.
According to public data queries, DAMO Academy has less than 600 personnel in Beijing and Hangzhou research institutes, while Huawei's research institute in Nanjing alone has reached 103501 people, which shows the gap between the two enterprises, which company is engaged in science and technology at a glance.
And the DAMO Academy has been required to "bear its own profits and losses" since its inception, which has led to them having to make a choice between business and research and development, in order to survive, the DAMO Academy has to carry out some for-profit work, that is, the DAMO Academy is not a research institution at all, it is no wonder that its name is not seen in the list of "sealed" technology companies in the United States.
Summary: We all know that scientific research is a time-consuming and labor-intensive work, and basically all scientific research companies lose money to engage in technology, but DAMO Academy is required to seek a balance between technology and business, how can it be possible to sink down to concentrate on technical research, which will inevitably lead to the future of DAMO Academy will not be a smooth road.
As a technology company, Ali did not even honor the investment amount promised by the Damo Academy before, but suffered sky-high fines one after another, and the listing plan was also shelved indefinitely. Now Ali has to be more concerned by relevant departments, and their development seems to need to be more careful in the future.