A look at a comprehensive Chinese e-commerce law, which was passed in August to address the sale of counterfeit and copycat merchandise, that is now in effect
Zen Soo / South China Morning Post :
Context & Ripple Effects
China's marketplaces had already been forced into ad-hoc anti-counterfeit work before any statute required it: Alibaba filed its first lawsuit over fakes sold on Taobao in 2017, treating litigation as a reputational tool rather than a legal obligation. Meanwhile, sellers on Western platforms complained that Amazon's counterfeit problem worsened once Chinese manufacturers could reach US consumers directly — the supply side of the same problem this law now addresses at its source.
The e-commerce law taking effect converts what was platform discretion into statutory duty, and it lands mid-arc: a year later, the US-China trade deal would also commit to clamping down on counterfeit and pirated goods flowing through platforms like Amazon, meaning Beijing's domestic enforcement and bilateral pressure were converging on the same listings.
First-order effects
- Platforms operating Chinese marketplaces — Taobao above all — now face legal liability for counterfeit and copycat merchandise they host, turning takedowns from PR strategy into compliance necessity.
- Merchants selling copycat goods domestically lose the gray zone: the conduct Alibaba had to sue over piecemeal is now expressly illegal under a comprehensive statute.
Second-order effects
- Tighter enforcement at the Chinese source narrows the pipeline of counterfeit goods reaching Amazon and other Western marketplaces, easing the seller complaints documented since 2016 and reducing the burden on overseas platforms to police listings themselves.
- The law gives Alibaba and rivals a defensible compliance framework to point to when brands and foreign governments press them on fakes, shifting negotiations from accusations toward audited process.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, China will keep codifying e-commerce conduct into comprehensive statutes rather than leaving it to platform terms of service — a trajectory visible again years later in rules letting merchants set their own prices across platforms.
- Statutory liability regimes for online marketplaces become the template other jurisdictions weigh as cross-border counterfeits make any single country's enforcement insufficient on its own.
The trend: Online marketplace governance is shifting from voluntary takedowns and one-off lawsuits to statutory liability, with China's e-commerce law as an early anchor and the later US-China trade commitments confirming the direction.