Xie Xin, ByteDance’s vice-president overseeing Feishu, said the productivity app’s WeChat mini program for cloud documents has been stuck in review limbo, without any feedback or response from the social media platform. Feishu is the Chinese version of ByteDance’s productivity tool Lark, an app that basically combines features similar to Slack and Google Docs.

“The review of the WeChat open platform has always been an unsolved mystery. Even if the review status becomes ‘passed’, WeChat can block the product for no reason,” Xie said in a post on Jinri Toutiao, the company’s popular news platform, on Thursday. “Our other two WeChat mini programs, ‘Feishu Conference’ and ‘Feishu’, have suffered such treatment as well.”

“We respect Tencent’s absolute market position and influence in the social media field, but … Tencent relies on its monopoly position to block Feishu and harm the enterprise and user experience. We do not agree [with this practice],” she added.

ByteDance says Tencent is blocking its office tool

Both WeChat and ByteDance did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

This is not the first time the two have tangled though.

ByteDance sued Tencent in June 2018 for anticompetitive behaviour while the Shenzhen-based internet giant accused the former of defamation in a dispute over sharing Douyin videos on WeChat.

Beijing plans to restructure national labs

Meanwhile, as the Presidential inauguration of Joe Biden nears, Beijing is pushing ahead with its push to increase self-development of core science and research.

China is planning to realign hundreds of “state key laboratories” with the country’s technology priorities and articulate a 10-year programme to boost spending on fundamental science research, as Beijing ramps up tech competition with the US.

At this week’s national technology working conference, the Ministry of Science and Technology said China will carry out a systemic restructuring of the country’s national key labs and release a 10-year plan to boost the country’s basic scientific research.

Priorities for 2021 also include mobilising a nationwide system to seek breakthroughs in key research areas, and encouraging enterprises to take on a more dominant role in science and technology research, the ministry said at the conference chaired by Minister of Science and Technology Wang Zhigang.

Although China is increasingly showcasing its tech prowess, whether in space or the deep sea – mounting US sanctions have hit tech leaders such as Huawei Technologies Co. and chip maker SMIC, laying bare some core weaknesses. President Xi Jinping has described the country’s inability to produce key hi-tech components as being strangled by an opponent – and all the signs are that he is determined to rectify the situation.

When China released its latest five-year plan at the end of last year, it included a chapter dedicated to technology for the first time. Watch this space in 2021.

Alibaba antitrust probe a new challenge for regulators

With all eyes on the antitrust investigation into Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, Beijing’s record to date in tackling alleged monopolistic behaviour by big business may not shed any light on how the case may end.

A review of more than 100 Chinese antitrust cases in the 12 years since China’s anti-monopoly law came into effect found that most targeted the pharmaceutical industry and municipal water utilities, according to research by the South China Morning Post.

Beijing has always been cautious when it comes to initiating regulatory probes into the country’s internet platforms, and of the few previous cases in the tech sector, none rival Alibaba’s in terms of business complexity and market size. (Alibaba is the parent company of the Post.)

Huawei removes Tencent games from its app store after disagreement

The State Administration of Market Regulation (SAMR) announced the probe in a one-line statement issued on Christmas Eve. It said the investigation would look into Alibaba’s alleged monopolistic business practices, such as “picking one from the two”, which forces online merchants to choose only one platform as their exclusive distribution channel.

Analysts and lawyers told the Post that the investigation will not be the last of its kind and that the lessons learned will very likely be applied by Chinese regulators to other internet platforms.

“This case implies that the government is no longer satisfied with the state of competition in the entire market and the trend [of tightening up antitrust regulation] will definitely affect other internet giants.” said Xie Yongjiang, executive director of the internet management and legislation research centre of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunication.

Chinese state media, including the People’s Daily, have argued that the Alibaba antitrust probe is a necessary step to ensure “healthier development” of the internet platform economy.