Nie Linhai, deputy commercial counselor of the ministry’s Department of Electronic Commerce and Informatization, said the ministry “suspect Taobao Mall may have held a monopoly”, the report said. Anyone into competition law might realize that the quote makes no sense. What’s actually going on here is that the e-commerce giant is being accused of abusing its dominant market position (Taobao might host as much as 70+% of online retail), which is one kind of monopolistic conduct prohibited under China’s Anti-monopoly Law.