China has opened investigations into several major online travel and hotel-booking platforms, including an -backed business and a Meituan unit, for suspected violations of unfair competition rules. The regulatory action comes as Beijing intensifies scrutiny of digital platforms while seeking to revive consumer spending in a slowing economy.
The Beijing branch of China’s State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) is investigating Meituan unit Beijing Sankuai Information Technology, Alibaba unit Hangzhou Taomei Aviation Services, Tongcheng Network Technology and Tujia Online Information Technology (Tianjin), according to the official CCTV broadcaster.
The investigations were launched after preliminary findings by regulators, CCTV reported on Saturday
China investigates Meituan, Alibaba-linked travel platforms
The SAMR’s Beijing branch has begun examining the four companies over suspected unfair competitive practices in the online hotel and travel-booking market.
The China Hotel Association separately confirmed that regulators had begun investigating four online hotel and travel-booking platforms, although it did not identify the companies. The association said the action followed a meeting between SAMR, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and participants in the online booking industry.
The companies have said they are cooperating with regulators.
Tongcheng and Tujia said on their official WeChat accounts that their businesses were operating normally and that they were cooperating with the authorities. Meituan said on its official website that it would cooperate with the investigation. Hangzhou Taomei also said through its official WeChat account that it was cooperating with regulators.
The investigations follow a broader effort by Chinese authorities to address what they regard as monopolistic or unfair practices across online platforms.
Most recently,, or about $776.41 million, over what regulators described as a monopoly in online hotel bookings.
Alibaba faces scrutiny on one front while investing in AI on another
The regulatory investigation involving Hangzhou Taomei is unfolding alongside a very different development for Alibaba.
Alibaba is expected to lead a $300 million investment in UniPat AI, an artificial intelligence training and benchmarking company founded by Li Kuan, according to people familiar with the matter.
The proposed financing would value UniPat AI at about $2.5 billion. Tencent Holdings and existing investors, including HSG, formerly known as Sequoia China, are also expected to participate, the people said.
The deal has not yet closed and its terms could still change, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private.
The investment would represent a significant vote of confidence in a relatively young AI company. UniPat was founded in late 2025 and focuses on creating realistic environments and datasets that can be used to train, test and benchmark AI models.
What is UniPat AI and why is Alibaba investing?
UniPat develops scenarios designed to measure how AI systems perform on tasks that resemble real-world applications.
Its benchmarks cover areas includingworking on software-engineering problems, browser agents carrying out everyday online tasks and multimodal AI models dealing with visual reasoning.
The company was founded by Li, who previously worked at Alibaba’s Tongyi AI laboratory. His work there included post-training analysis, data synthesis and reinforcement learning.
UniPat’s research operation has also received backing from Monolith and Jinqiu Fund, a fund backed by ByteDance.
The company’s focus reflects a growing demand within the AI industry for reliable ways to assess increasingly capable models. Beyond raw computing power, developers and investors are placing greater emphasis on the quality of the data used to train AI systems and the benchmarks used to measure their performance.
Chinese AI developers have increasingly used international benchmark rankings to demonstrate the capabilities of their models. Recent releases from companies such as Moonshot have drawn attention in part through their performance on global AI evaluation platforms.