The biggest rival to Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) in Chinese e-commerce is accusing the technology giant of violating market regulations and hampering competition in the run-up to the nation’s largest online sales promotion.
JD.com Inc (京東) filed a complaint with the State Administration for Industry & Commerce (SAIC), the regulatory body overseeing consumer protection, according to JD’s official Weibo account.
The company said Alibaba told some merchants not to cooperate with other e-commerce platforms if they were participating in Alibaba’s Singles’ Day promotion this month.
Calling in the regulator is the latest twist in the battle between the companies for Chinese customers that has already seen Alibaba invest US$4.6 billion for a stake in a retailer to challenge JD’s core strength of consumer electronics. Singles’ Day on Wednesday next week has morphed into China’s biggest excuse to shop, leading e-commerce operators to flood the Internet with promotions and discounts.
“After receiving reports from dozens of apparel retailers that a competitor is inappropriately pressuring them to pull out of JD.com’s Singles Day promotions, we have formally requested an SAIC investigation,” JD said in a text message.
Two phone calls to the SAIC’s market department went unanswered during non-working hours.
Alibaba, which started Singles’ Day in 2009, began replicating its success overseas last year, seeing sales spikes led by Russia. Last year more than 57.1 billion yuan (US$9 billion) of transactions were conducted through Alibaba’s platform during the promotion.
“Alibaba welcomes competition as it benefits consumers, merchants and service providers. It also contributes to the growth and diversity of the e-commerce ecosystem, which in turn will benefit our business,” Hong Kong-based Alibaba spokesman Rico Ngai said in an e-mailed statement.
Separately, more than 40 percent of goods sold online in China last year were either counterfeits or of bad quality, the official Xinhua news agency said, citing a report which was delivered to China’s top lawmakers on Monday.
The report indicated that just below 59 percent of items sold online last year were “genuine or of good quality,” Xinhua said.
China has been trying to shake off a notoriety for pirated and counterfeit goods, long a major headache for global brands targeting the Chinese market from iPhone maker Apple Inc to luxury retailer LVMH.
Alibaba has been lobbying to stay off a US blacklist for fakes after coming under renewed pressure this year over suspected counterfeits sold on its shopping platforms.
The report called for “accelerated legislation in e-commerce, improved supervision and clarification of consumers’ rights and sellers’ responsibilities.”
Online sales in China grew 40 percent last year to 2.8 trillion yuan.
Additional reporting by Reuters
CHIP WAR: Tariffs on Taiwanese chips would prompt companies to move their factories, but not necessarily to the US, unleashing a ‘global cross-sector tariff war’ US President Donald Trump would “shoot himself in the foot” if he follows through on his recent pledge to impose higher tariffs on Taiwanese and other foreign semiconductors entering the US, analysts said. Trump’s plans to raise tariffs on chips manufactured in Taiwan to as high as 100 percent would backfire, macroeconomist Henry Wu (吳嘉隆) said. He would “shoot himself in the foot,” Wu said on Saturday, as such economic measures would lead Taiwanese chip suppliers to pass on additional costs to their US clients and consumers, and ultimately cause another wave of inflation. Trump has claimed that Taiwan took up to
A start-up in Mexico is trying to help get a handle on one coastal city’s plastic waste problem by converting it into gasoline, diesel and other fuels. With less than 10 percent of the world’s plastics being recycled, Petgas’ idea is that rather than letting discarded plastic become waste, it can become productive again as fuel. Petgas developed a machine in the port city of Boca del Rio that uses pyrolysis, a thermodynamic process that heats plastics in the absence of oxygen, breaking it down to produce gasoline, diesel, kerosene, paraffin and coke. Petgas chief technology officer Carlos Parraguirre Diaz said that in
SUPPORT: The government said it would help firms deal with supply disruptions, after Trump signed orders imposing tariffs of 25 percent on imports from Canada and Mexico The government pledged to help companies with operations in Mexico, such as iPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), shift production lines and investment if needed to deal with higher US tariffs. The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday announced measures to help local firms cope with the US tariff increases on Canada, Mexico, China and other potential areas. The ministry said that it would establish an investment and trade service center in the US to help Taiwanese firms assess the investment environment in different US states, plan supply chain relocation strategies and
Japan intends to closely monitor the impact on its currency of US President Donald Trump’s new tariffs and is worried about the international fallout from the trade imposts, Japanese Minister of Finance Katsunobu Kato said. “We need to carefully see how the exchange rate and other factors will be affected and what form US monetary policy will take in the future,” Kato said yesterday in an interview with Fuji Television. Japan is very concerned about how the tariffs might impact the global economy, he added. Kato spoke as nations and firms brace for potential repercussions after Trump unleashed the first salvo of