As China’s anti-monopoly bureau tightened its regulations on big tech players and imposed some fines, Alibaba was hit hard with a record-high antitrust fine of 18.2 billion yuan (more than 2.8 billion USD) for supposedly abusing market dominance. One month later Alibaba Group Holdings Limited (NYSE: BABA) announced its Q1 2021 results with an increase of 64% in revenues compared to last year. The company reached annual active consumers of over 1 billion, including 891 million consumers across Chinese retail marketplace.[1] Proving thus a firm position of its business model and standing.

"Alibaba achieved a historic milestone of one billion annual active consumers globally in the fiscal year ended March 2021," commented Daniel Zhang, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Alibaba Group. 

"We will continue to focus on customer experience and value creation through innovation, as we pursue our mission to make it easy to do business anywhere in the digital era," he added.

Only 1.8% of the Chinese were online in 2000, when Alibaba had been on the market for only 1 year. Nowadays, more than 50% of the population is online.

Until 2007, everything was unregulated – however, in that year, the Chinese government made decision that all video-sharing platforms need to be licensed. That decision was reason that led Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent to dominate the market. The sole licensing was a response to international pressure, mostly Motion Picture Association of America.

Nevertheless, Alibaba took the use of the regulation and strived to become one of the world's largest retailers and e-commerce companies.

[1] Alibaba Press Release: https://www.alibabagroup.com/en/news/press_pdf/p210513.pdf