Alibaba chief meets regulator
Print Edition
THE head of China’s commerce regulator met with the chairman of Alibaba Group on Friday to discuss combating fake products, with the two adopting a conciliatory tone following a long-running dispute over illegal business on the Internet company’s platforms.
The meeting took place the same day that the regulator — the State Administration for Industry and Commerce — backtracked on an earlier report that excoriated the e-commerce company for not doing enough to suppress counterfeiting on its websites.
The SAIC issued what it called a “white paper” on Wednesday saying many products sold on Alibaba’s websites infringed on trademarks, or were banned, substandard or fake.
White papers often convey official policy positions.
But in a follow-up statement posted on its website on Friday, a spokesman for the regulator said the report was in fact not a white paper and carried no legal force.
“The most recent SAIC posting speaks for itself. We feel vindicated,” Alibaba said in a statement in response.
It’s unclear what prompted the regulator’s seeming about-face in a highly unusual episode, one that saw a major Chinese corporation clash publicly with an influential government organization.
It remains unclear whether the SAIC intended any specific action against Alibaba or counterfeiting in general.
According to the SAIC statement, Alibaba Chairman Jack Ma said in the meeting: “We have always been committed to combating fake products and have devoted our efforts to solving this difficult problem.”
Alibaba will “actively cooperate with the government” to tackle the issue, he was quoted as saying in the statement, which added that both sides had agreed to work together to “promote the healthy and orderly development” of e-commerce in China.
Zhang Mao, head of the SAIC, said the company had made good efforts in safeguarding consumer interests and added that his agency should find new modes of oversight for e-commerce.
Alibaba is sensitive to accusations about its efforts to suppress counterfeit products, which span several years. During a quarterly earnings call on Thursday, Vice Chairman Joseph Tsai called the SAIC’s initial report “flawed,” and said the firm was preparing to file a formal complaint.
An SAIC survey published last week claimed that only about a third of the products it had purchased from Alibaba-owned website taobao.com were genuine.
“Alibaba has not paid enough attention to illegal operations on its online trading platforms or taken effective measures to tackle them ... placing itself in the biggest credibility crisis since its establishment,” the SAIC said.
Headquartered in Hangzhou, capital of east China’s Zhejiang Province, Alibaba completed the world’s stock market flotation with a US$25 billion listing on the New York Stock Exchange in September.
Ma, who is one of the richest men in Asia, started the company in 1999.
Last week he told business and political leaders gathered in Davos that he wants to take Alibaba beyond China and turn it into a global e-commerce platform serving 2 billion customers.
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