Adam Minter, Columnist

Why Alibaba Can't Stop Counterfeiters

Distinguishing knockoffs from the real thing is harder than it seems.

January 3, 2017 at 11:30 PM UTC

Adam Minter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering the business of sports. He is the author, most recently, of “Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale."

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It's hardly a happy new year for Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Just before Christmas, the U.S. Trade Representative added Alibaba's Taobao e-commerce site to a list of "notorious markets" that traffic in counterfeits. That's an unseemly place for a publicly held company: Other members include a Chinese shopping mall that specializes in counterfeit leather goods and a Paraguayan border market rife with organized crime that hawks everything from fake Ray-Bans to knockoff DVDs.

Alibaba isn't keen to be associated with this motley group. But like Amazon.com Inc., EBay Inc. and other online marketplaces dependent on Chinese manufacturers, it has struggled to maintain its integrity against an onslaught of counterfeiters. Without an aggressive crackdown by China's government, these marketplaces won't stand much of a chance against the fakes.