Some companies are so good in conducting business that not only they thrive and remain unaffected by global crisis or the 'COVID-19' coronavirus pandemic, but that they can also monopolize the market they are in.

In China, one of the most capable, is Alibaba.

The Chinese tech giant founded by former teacher and tour guide Jack Ma, has been hit with a record $2.8 billion Fine for violating its anti-monopoly regulations.

In a statement released on Saturday, China's State Administration for Market Supervision described the company's behaviors as having "eliminated and restricted competition in the online retail platform service market" as well as having "infringed on the business of the merchants on the platform."

Alibaba is one of the most influential tech giants in China, as well as the world.

In a press release issued on the same day, Alibaba said it would accept the fine “with sincerity” and "ensure its compliance with determination" in order to strengthen internal systems “to better serve our responsibility to society.”

According to Alibaba:

The company is hit with such huge fine following the investigation by the Chinese government that suspected Alibaba for "monopolistic conduct."

Back in November 2020, Alibaba's affiliate, Ant Group, was unable to jumpstart a seismic initial public stock offering, which was predicted to raise at least $37 billion. The process was stopped by financial regulators in Shanghai and Hong Kong, days before the IPO was expected to happen.

In October, Ma also made controversial comments during a business conference in Shanghai, publicly taking issue with China's financial system.

"China does not have a systemic financial risk problem. Chinese finance basically does not carry risk; rather, the risk comes from lacking a system," he said, criticizing the country's state banks, comparing them to "pawnshops."

Following his comments, Jack Ma disappeared, and only reappeared in late January 2021 when he spoke at an event for rural teachers in China.

It should be noted that while $2.8 billion in fine is the largest penalty ever given in China's campaign to tighten supervision of its internet titans, the fine is only 4% of Alibaba's total 2019 sales in China — which was ¥456 billion, or over $69 billion.

The company reported profits of more than $12 billion in the last three months of 2020 alone.

In other words, the fine is unlikely to make a substantial dent in Alibaba’s fortunes.

This fine appears to also show that the Chinese authorities don't really want to tighten their control over internet giants in a way that would undermine China in its strategic rivalry with other global powers, especially those in the West, particularly, those tech companies from the U.S..

In high-tech industries, “competition between China and the United States is becoming more intense,” a former official with the market regulator, Li Qing, said in a January interview.

“We must give our nation’s innovative enterprises more space to develop, a better policy environment and more room to correct faults. We must encourage enterprises to keep innovating and to become big and strong.”

This kind of approach is very similar to the West, particularly in the U.S.. It has been for a long time that large internet companies were repeatedly fined. Google, Microsoft, Facebook and others, have been asked to pay for various antitrust violations. But in general, the amount of money the companies had to pay were only fractions of the amount they earned.

Such penalties also have not changed the nature of the companies’ businesses enough to mitigate concerns about their power.