China Crackdown Rocks Investors: ‘Everybody’s in the Crosshairs’

Motley Fool

Why Alibaba Stock Just Fell 4%

Shares of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding (NYSE: BABA) dropped 4% as of 10 a.m. EDT Monday, and given the headlines coming out of China last week regarding how the government is cracking down on tech companies left and right, this is not too surprising. As The Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend, the Chinese government is pressing tech giants Tencent Holdings (OTC: TCEHY) and Alibaba affiliate company Ant Group to help it develop a new “state-backed digital currency” — i.e., a cryptocurrency — to be dubbed the e-CNY (or electronic Chinese yuan). This is bad news for Alibaba because Ant operates the Alipay digital payments network already, and the emergence of a competing e-CNY brings “the risk of eroding the huge user base” that Alibaba and its affiliates have built up over the past decade.