It’s been too easy for counterfeiters to get away with it, the company argued in a new appeal.
Alibaba has long been accused of housing counterfeiters, leading to its eBay-like Taobao platform regularly being blacklisted by the US. But the company sees itself as a victim, too, and wants help from the government.
The e-commerce giant made a public appeal at a Monday press conference, later published on its news website , calling for the Chinese government to “impose tougher criminal sanctions” on counterfeiters.
In the appeal, Alibaba said China’s “ambiguous” counterfeiting laws were too lax for any kind of meaningful progress to occur.
Alibaba claims to have identified 4,495 leads tied to counterfeiting last year, each involving a value of goods exceeding the statutory minimum of 50,000 yuan ($7,280) for criminal investigation.
