On July 25th, China’s largest online travel platform, Ctrip, was fined a total of 5.179 billion RMB by the State Administration for Market Regulation of the Chinese Communist Party for alleged monopoly practices.
The State Administration for Market Regulation announced on July 25th that Ctrip Group Limited had been fined for abusing its dominant market position and engaging in monopolistic behavior, with a total fine of 5.179 billion RMB, and ordered to make corrections.
Ctrip subsequently issued 19 corrective measures, including immediately ceasing exclusive cooperation and unreasonable demands for “lowest price across the entire network.” This case marks another official crackdown by the Chinese Communist Party on platform economy after Alibaba, Meituan, and Zhiwang, and is considered the first anti-monopoly case in the online travel industry in mainland China.
Chinese media reported that this confiscation of illegal gains is the first of its kind in the internet platform monopoly cases.
According to the administrative penalty decision, Ctrip was found to have a dominant market position in the market for online hotel reservation platform services in China, with a market share exceeding 50% since 2020. The investigation determined that it had simultaneously engaged in two types of monopolistic behaviors: requiring exclusive cooperation with “branded” hotels, constituting restrictive trading practices, and compelling operators of “high-quality” and “unbranded” hotels to provide the “lowest price across the entire network,” constituting the practice of attaching unreasonable trading conditions.
Ctrip Group is a Chinese travel platform founded in 1999, listed on Nasdaq in the US in 2003, and listed in Hong Kong in 2021. Its brands include Ctrip, Qunar, Trip.com, and Skyscanner, and it is also the largest shareholder of Tongcheng Travel.
Since 2025, Ctrip has been summoned multiple times by regulatory authorities in Guizhou, Zhengzhou, Yunnan, and other regions due to violations of operating regulations, mainly related to unfair competition and technological interference in pricing by merchants.
In September 2025, Ctrip signed a marketing cooperation agreement with the Cambodian Ministry of Tourism to promote tourism in Cambodia, but in December, this move stirred strong doubts among Chinese users about the safety of traveling to Cambodia and raised concerns that Ctrip might expose personal information to the local illicit industry chain, leading to customers falling victim to online fraud.
Additionally, Ctrip’s substantial profits are seen as a primary reason for its investigation.
In February of this year, Ctrip Group’s CEO Fan Min and director Ji Qi both resigned.
However, the CCP’s Anti-Monopoly Law has been frequently criticized as a tool for extortion.
The CCP revised and implemented the Anti-Monopoly Law for the first time on August 1, 2022, significantly increasing the penalties for various monopoly behaviors.
Despite many countries having anti-monopoly regulations, the CCP’s authoritarian system and lack of transparency have led to criticism of its anti-monopoly mechanism from the outside world.
Observers point out that the CCP’s hefty fines often target private technology giants with significant scale and sensitive assets, aiming to “tame” private enterprises, strengthen the CCP’s control over the economy, or alleviate local fiscal pressures. Critics also argue that the CCP’s law enforcement agencies have extensive discretionary power in defining “monopoly” without a fully independent judicial review, turning it into a tool for administrative intervention in the market or opportunistic wealth harvesting.