Billionaire Alibaba-founder Jack Ma wants China's top lawmakers to come down harder on fake goods - the very same plea voiced by global brands that have accused the e-commerce service of harboring knock-offs.
The Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. chairman appealed to the National People's Congress convening in Beijing this week to penalize counterfeiters as harshly as drunk drivers. In an open letter published on his Weibo account Tuesday, Ma said enforcement had been too lax and the authorities should raise maximum prison sentences and other penalties to deter illegal profiteers.
The unusual public entreaty follows persistent criticism that Ma and his company haven't done enough to swat copycats. In a major embarrassment, Alibaba was again labeled a "notorious market" last year by the US Office of the Trade Representative - just four years after escaping the label. It's a list that includes torrent website Pirate Bay and flea markets from Brazil to Nigeria.
"We need to fight counterfeits the same way we fight drunk driving," Ma wrote in his letter. "No one company can do it alone. The existing laws are lagging, failing to impose actual threats on the behavior of counterfeiters and leave far too much room for cheating."
Winning the trust of foreign brands is key to realizing Ma's ambitions of global expansion. But Alibaba still fends off accusations about its unwillingness or inability to eradicate fakes from its platforms, the subject of a lawsuit filed in 2015 by Kering SA. The Chinese e-commerce giant has countered by saying it's doing all it can to take down fakes. It removed 380 million product listings and closed about 180,000 stores on its Taobao platform in the 12 months to August, the company said in a letter to the USTR.
