A cyber war, between China’s two rival social media heavyweights, Sina Weibo and Tencent, has escalated sharply signalling sharpening competition for the country’s surging web-based commerce. On Tuesday, Sina Weiba, a micro-blogging platform owned by the Alibaba group, the e-commerce giant, began to ban users promoting WeChat, run by rival Tencent, on its service.

Chinese state media report the move came after WeChat shut down on its site, the promotion channel of Kuaidi Dache, a taxi-hailing service, in which Alibaba has a stake.

Alibaba and Tencent compete fiercely on several fronts, including internet finance and online commerce.

Though the two platforms are not head-to-head competitors — Sina Weiba is more like a Twitter adaptation and WeChat, a Chinese style Facebook with a difference -- they do vie for time and mindshare of China’s social media.

That could impact the market share of e-commerce, which is surging in China. On November 11, over $9 billion of sales were transacted over Taobao, Alibaba online shopping platform. The shopping binge over the internet was in celebration of “Singles Day,” conceived in China as a riposte to Valentine’s Day in the West. On Tuesday, Sina Weibo did not directly name WeChat as the target, but said users who aggressively spread QR code and other commercial information would be banned. WeChat, which uses QR code scanning as its main promotion tool, was hit hardest by the decision.

Analysts say the rivalry has intensified after Sina Weibo’s user base dropped by nine per cent to 281 million in 2013. On the other hand, the user friendly WeChat is attracting more eyeballs than ever before.

Xinhua, the Chinese news agency, reports that last year, Taobao blocked visits from WeChat. Alibaba's online payment platform Alipay also banned WeChatters.

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