Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba has been hit with an Y18.3bn (£2bn) fine after an investigation ruled that it had abused its market position. 

China’s anti-monopoly regulator handed out the hefty punishment after finding that Alibaba had restricted sellers from doing business or running promotions on rival platforms.

The fine amounts to around 4% of Alibaba’s revenue in China during 2019. It marks a statement of intent from Beijing in its drive to curtail the dominance of online companies such as Alibaba and JD.com, which were only lightly regulated until recently.

China’s market regulator revealed its findings on Saturday following a probe that has lasted for a number of months.

It ruled that Alibaba was guilty of “abusing its dominant position” by making third-party sellers list their products exclusively on its Tmall and Taobao websites.

Alibaba accepted the fine and has vowed to introduce measures to lower the entry barriers and business costs that its sellers face across its ecommerce platforms.

Alibaba’s executive vice-chair Joe Tsai said: “With this penalty decision we’ve received good guidance on some of the specific issues under the anti-monopoly law.”

He added: “We’re happy to get the matter behind us, but the tendency is that regulators will be keen to to look at some of the areas where you might have unfair competition.”

The fine represents the latest blow for Alibaba after Beijing blocked the planned IPO of its Ant Group affiliate last year.

Its stock market debut in Shanghai and Hong Kong had been predicted to become the world’s largest ever float before China pulled the plug last November.

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