Photo from Chinadaily.com

The United States Trade Representative recent listing of “China’s Taobao on the world’s ‘notorious market’ list for piracy and counterfeit offenders” has got China’s leading online retailer and the Ministry of Commerce in a tizzy, according to a post on Alizila.com, an e-commerce news and commentary site run by Taobao’s parent company Alibaba.

During a news conference in Beijing, Shen Danyang, a spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce, said that China is “greatly concerned and strongly opposed” to Taobao being singled out as a haven for Chinese vendors selling counterfeit products.

 

“When referring to Chinese businesses, we noticed that the United States notorious market list would use terms like ‘alleged’ and ‘according to industry information,’ ” Shen said. “With ambiguous terms and no conclusive evidence or detailed analysis, this is very irresponsible and not objective,” Reuters quoted Shen as saying.

• My wife purchased a soy-milk machine that broke down after just a month of use. When we took it to the manufacturer for repairs, we were told it’s a fake (but they were kind enough to repair it anyway – which made it good for another few months before it broke down again at which point we gave up and bought another machine).
• My father-in-law recently bought a Canon Power G12 camera on Taobao that also proved to be a fake when he took it into a Canon repair store for verification. When confronted with this, the Taobao store owner was suprisingly forthcoming in offering a refund and gave every indication that his business model is based on duping customers into buying his fake cameras, which are typically a few hundred kuai less than ones sold in retail stores – refunding customers who caught on appeared to be a matter of course as the majority presumably never even realize they’ve been duped.