There are easier ways to say this: The issue was: there is no competition in Chinese banking because the state uses banks to hand out cheap loans/subsidise com

There are easier ways to say this: The issue was: there is no competition in Chinese banking because the state uses banks to hand out cheap loans/subsidise companies, part of this is paying depositors very low returns, Ant created competition by paying higher deposit rates, this led to a surge of money leaving Chinese banks, and the whole system would have toppled if this continued. On top of this, and something which I don't know is true but is something I have heard, Ant was taking money from depositors who are usually paid 100bps and paying them 700bps, and then they were lending that money back to banks at 700bps+ (one part of this story is, because of the point in the previous paragraph, that Chinese financial markets are largely bank-led...so if you run a money market fund, you can start out buying bonds but once you are $200bn then you have to lend to banks...it is hard to understand how Ant thought this could work). Either way, this wasn't a minor infraction. If this continued, either Ant or the Chinese banking system would have gone down. A substantial number of corporates would have gone too (China's debt levels are sky-high). The construction of the Ant MMF fund basically challenged the foundations of China's financial markets...that isn't a minor infraction.