全球最大的网络零售平台充斥着海量的假冒伪劣商品，来自名牌厂商，中国政府或美国的压力都对此束手无策，马云，亚洲最强大的商人，却有办法应对。但是，打击假货势必伤害他的阿里巴巴帝国。
请注意：马云，这个监督着世界上最大的网络零售商的男人，他在福布斯全球最有权力男人排行榜上高居第22位，真心不喜欢律师。尤其不喜欢那些攻击他缔造的两千亿帝国的律师。尽管向来骨瘦如柴，当谈起那个纽约的高级律师代表他的客户，开云集团，法国奢侈品集团，旗下拥有古琦和伊夫·圣·洛朗等品牌，起诉他侵犯商标权并销售假货的时候，马云在他杭州的办公室沙发上几乎跳了起来。他坚持说，没有任何可能解决这一问题。
马云说，“我宁可输掉案子，输掉钱，但是我们会赢得尊严和尊重。”
如果他指的是成千上万在阿里巴巴旗下淘宝在线集市上谋生的小商户心目中的尊重，那么他说得没错。对于马云而言，他的中国零售网站的交易量是易贝网的5倍——去年所有物品的交易总额是3940亿美元——这些卖家都是他的命根子。对于卖家来说，马云就是资本主义的英雄，为他们成为中产阶级铺就了一条道路。然而，在这个社会契约的中心，是一个未公开承认的事实：阿里巴巴的不可摧毁，实则，在很大的程度上，建立在违法的假冒货品之上。
假货的规模是巨大的——在任何时候淘宝都会销售数以万计的疑似假冒商品，从手提包到汽车配件，从体育用品到珠宝。当福布斯试图在淘宝搜索带有“Gucci”的商品，并把价格选定在300元或50美元以下时，价格远低于正牌的Gucci产品，有30,000个结果弹出。在第一页出现的卖家中的4家在在线聊天中承认他们雇佣工厂仿造Gucci产品。余下的卖家中也有相当一部分抄袭了Gucci的设计，只做了细微的改动，例如将古琦的首字母G改成D。
Netnames，一家帮助著名品牌打击网络假货的网站，指出他的客户们认为淘宝上销售的他们的产品多达80%是假货。丹·麦金农（Dan McKinnon），运动鞋制造商新百伦全球品牌保护中心负责人，支持这一说法。鉴于这家波士顿的公司并未在淘宝授权经销商，麦金农估计该网上销售的所谓新百伦产品至少有八成都是假货或者值得怀疑。阿里巴巴，为了其自身，不敢贸然估计。
某种程度上说，他们估计不起。马云在去年的纽约证券交易所获得全球最大IPO（首次公开募股）融资，募资高达250亿美元。阿里巴巴的税收比其之前两个财年的税收翻了一番，高达123亿美元。马云的个人身价达218亿美元。如果阿里巴巴从其购物网站杜绝假货，会出现什么情况呢？哈里·勒温（Harley Lewin），麦卡特公司的资深产权律师表示：“他们会破产。”
马云对这一结果不感兴趣。但是他同时还有兴趣在此结果发生之前，抢先执行阿里巴巴大胆的下一个阶段：从中国的巨头进而成为世界范围内的主要零售商之一。这要求与全球的消费者建立信任——能够让买家当心的这种名声毁了的信任。日本汽车生产商日产汽车在北美地区的品牌保护经理威廉·弗西斯（WilliamForsythe）说,“马云挣了很多钱，但是如果他想要一个拥有遍布全球的市场，他需要建立一个保护国际品牌的机制。”
对于马云而言，这是个难题：一方面，打假的力度要足以让世人认为他尊重正品版权的神圣不可侵犯；另一方面，又不能因此让仍是他的衣食父母的小卖家们没了生计。
马云说的越多，我们就越清楚他的感情落到哪里。他认为皮带和配饰等奢侈品零卖几千美元这件事本身就十分不可理解。“Gucci或随便一个什么品牌的手袋怎么能卖那么贵呢?这很荒唐，”他说。“我理解这些品牌制造商们不高兴，但是我还是要说那是你们的经营模式。你们的经营模式也需要反省。”
马云的发迹和中国经济自身的上升是不可区分的。1999年曾经的英语教师与他在中国东部城市杭州的单位里的17名同事成立了阿里巴巴。他的创业项目是企业对企业的网站Alibaba.com，该网站连接了美国及其他地区的公司和位于中国的供货商。之后，在2003年他推出了淘宝。正当中国发展成为世界第二大经济体时，淘宝变成中国位居第一的互联网购物网站。据艾瑞咨询公司的统计，中国约50%的网上零售经由淘宝销售。
早年的马云，并不拥有那些有助于企业家在中国获得成功的标准特征：政治人脉或精英教育背景。然而，好运让他在那些引人注目的商界领袖还不那么瞩目的时候遇到了他。当他还在政府部门做一个初级职员的时候，他被委派去带人参观长城，而此人不是别人正是JerryYang，雅虎的创始人之一，他成为阿里巴巴早期的投资人之一，同样地方式他认识了日本软银的创始人孙正义。马云证明了其在处理与中国政府的关系时也同样的娴熟。
从阿里巴巴创始之初，对于淘宝上猖獗的假货的指控，马云就表示要采取严厉的态度。但是随着网站的壮大，以及品牌厂商的投诉增多，在2008年美国贸易代表办公室将淘宝列入恶名市场名单中，加入了百度和PirateBay之列。
假货在中国早已有之。回到19世纪，美国商人就在中国的工作坊造出便宜的画作的复制品。但是中国的仿冒问题在上世纪80年代，中国开始向自由市场资本主义转型的历史转型期中变得尤为严重。事实上，马云把他所面临的假货问题看作是中国经济上升所带来的直接后果。正当这个庞然大物从睡梦中逐渐苏醒之际，仿造各种各样货物的工厂也从其乡下的田间地头迅速涌出。由于政府对产权保护置若罔闻——加之中国的民众们得了一夜暴富的疯病，这在中国仍然不足为奇，于是中国成为了假冒商品的避难所。从假冒的运动鞋到处方药品，到盗版的好莱坞大片，无所不有。据美国国土安全部显示，在2014财年，从中国大陆和香港进入美国被查的假货价值近11亿美元，占据其查获的假货总数的88%。
在2011年初，100多位阿里巴巴的店家被指故意设置欺骗性卖家，对于一些流行的电子产品诸如笔记本电脑和平板显示器他们接受订单付款实际却从未发货，阿里巴巴曾面临一次巨大的丑闻， 马云在杭州的一家酒吧里召见了其高管们，为此进行深刻反思，并对此事进行调查。此次获利数额不大，可能是20亿美元，但它却涉及了2300多家骗子店家。
当时处理该事件的首席调查员SavioKwan说，“发展这种不惜一切代价追求短期经济收益的文化，该公司置自身于危险之中。”阿里巴巴执行总裁DavidWei及其首席运行官ElvisLee在丑闻发生之后离开了阿里巴巴，尽管他们二人并未被指有任何不端行为。同年，阿里巴巴关闭了其网站上一批销售假货的店家，引发了阿里巴巴总部之外的上百名店家的抗议。
在欺诈丑闻后的第一次采访中，马云告诉福布斯的记者，“我们可能是中国仅有的一家实行高管责任制的公司。人们说‘马云，你做的太过了。’我的意思是太多了。但是我认为中国需要这些。”
马云自此开始更多地与品牌联手处理假货问题，而且这足以说服美国贸易代表办公室在2012年将其从他们的黑名单上移除。但是该机构曾警告阿里巴巴，必须采取更大的行动以保证不会重返这个黑名单。对于西方的那些品牌厂商而言，他们采取的措施远远不够。开云公司，2014年第一家因为商标侵权和贩卖假货而起诉阿里巴巴的公司，在两家公司商谈如何解决和打击假货问题之后撤回申诉。然而，在不到一年的时间里，这一商谈却不知所终，开云决定再次起诉阿里巴巴。在一系列平淡乏味的控诉中，第二次的诉讼文称，淘宝仅在2014年的一个月当中就从2731个不同的卖家手中售出了37000个冒牌Gucci包包。（阿里巴巴的一位发言人反驳称，开云公司的控诉“毫无根据。”）在10月份的一项全球市场的调查中，商标工作联盟(TrademarkWorking Group），其包括几家美国主要企业在内的25个匿名成员均指出淘宝“仍然是销售假冒产品的最大网络平台。”
一月份，国家工商总局发布的一项调差显示，他们检验的淘宝上的货物中仅有37%是正品。之后该机构在其网站上挂出一份文件，内容是其于2014年与阿里巴巴主管们进行的一次会谈，他们批评了阿里巴巴解决假货问题的努力不够以及他们其他的商业行为。报告指出，阿里巴巴将会为此面临严重的“信任危机”。阿里巴巴对这些调查表示不服。在与其投资人的一次盈利电话会议上，阿里副总裁蔡崇信（JoeTsai）痛斥该调查有“缺陷”、“方法武断”。政府最终从其网站撤销这一文件。尽管阿里巴巴声称获得了胜利，它还是同意要与该机构联手加大力度对抗假货。
美国服装与鞋类协会CEO JuanitaDuggan代表其他深受中国假货之苦的广大品牌商说，她的组织曾就中国企业如何更好地保护品牌与阿里巴巴有过集中的谈论，却只遭到抵抗。“我们曾不止一次地与他们进行交谈，但是仍然裹足不前，”Juanita Duggan。忍无可忍之际，该协会只好在4月份写信给美国贸易代表办公室，指责阿里巴巴“既没有能力也缺乏兴趣解决该问题，只能通过使人产生羞辱感这一机制发挥作用。”他们现在试图让阿里巴巴重新回到美国政府列出的那份恶名市场黑名单上。
在给美国贸易代表办公室的一封信中，阿里巴巴国际政府事务副总裁EricPelletier回应称，他们愿与达根的服装与鞋类协会合作，但是他们的很多要求都是“无理取闹，不切实际。”最重要的是，阿里巴巴说他们接受服装与鞋类协会的意愿将迫使改变他们自己的经营模式。“合作的代价是要求阿里巴巴集团改变其经营模式中最根本的方面，这样的要求是不合理的，”Pelletier在信中写道。
在阿里巴巴总部，杭州市郊的一处竖立着玻璃钢筋建成的大厦，有16,000名员工，其中有一间作战室。从马云的办公室向下3层，一块大屏幕上显示着中国地图，每一两秒钟，地图上的点闪烁着。在一个以网络间谍而臭名昭著的国家，尤其是提到商业和贸易秘密时，阿里巴巴在监视着自己。
更确切地说，它在操作着一个世界上最大的私人业务——一个致力于假货的力量——2,000个强大的，都是雇佣于阿里巴巴人，在2013和2014年耗费了总值1亿6千万在这一任务上。自2011年以来，投入的总人数已经翻了5番。如果我们只去评论马云的行为而非言语，这是一个出发点。“如果我说了对假冒物品不容忍，”他说，“那么我们是认真的。”
马云的“防卫大臣”邵晓峰是一个在中国的警察局工作20年的老人，他兴奋地炫耀阿里巴巴用于监控假货的“大数据”电脑系统。该地图上闪烁的点表明了淘宝的交易基于这样一些特点，例如明显的低价，图片展示的效果差，以及冗长的商品介绍。标记显示可疑的那些交易在被撤下之前将会得到进一步的跟踪。
该系统记录下从该网站撤下的假货的总数——仅一天就有成千上万。其他的软件可以对比该网站的商家上传的产品快照和正品商家上传的防止盗版的官方照片。Shao称，该公司仅去年一年就从淘宝撤下1亿件假冒货品，在2010年就高达1400万件。他说九成的假货都由阿里巴巴的团队发现，而不是被仿冒的商家所发现。“我们在主动地发现这些问题并且在解决，”Shao表示。
尽管有高级的反盗版软件，还有2000多双眼睛在盯着，阿里巴巴仍然在玩着这世界上最大的打地鼠的游戏。每天都有10万家新的淘宝店获准开店，Shao 说阿里巴巴也无法知道他们在卖什么，直到他们开始销售。“我们离完美还差很远，”Shao承认。这就是为何阿里巴巴将这场战役移到了现实世界。两年前阿里巴巴增强了与中国警方的合作，帮助打击假冒货物制贩者。警方分配了两名警员给阿里巴巴总部，合作开发软件，以马云提供的数据为基础查出假货的源头。ManNiu，阿里巴巴的老家浙江省公共安全厅，经济犯罪调查组的头，指出，仅从夏天以来，他经手的160起涉嫌制贩假货的案子中有300个嫌疑人的抓获都得到阿里巴巴的协助。“我们合作起来，会做得越来越好，”Man说。
多年以来，阿里巴巴有一个程序，品牌厂商发现假货时可以通过这一程序要求撤销假货，但是品牌商们都说该程序让人十分迷惑，必要的文件太多，阿里巴巴的反应太慢。所以在7月，阿里巴巴开通了一个英文网站，在该网站上品牌商们可以要求撤销假货，之前的那个平台并不完全是英文的。自4月以来，确信发现假货的品牌商们可以通过一个教过“goodfaith”的项目，以一种简便快捷的方式使得假货可以更快地撤下。阿里巴巴说这一项目将撤销假货需要的时间从3－5天缩短为1－3天。这仍然与eBay有很大的距离，在2014年92%的投诉在收到投诉的12小时之内就得到解决了。“我们对合作者十分开放，”马云说，“这是我们对待假货这个恐怖分子的一场军事战争。［品牌商们］不得不与我们一道打击敌人，而不是杀害我们的战士。”
自从新百伦加入了“goodfaith”项目以来，DanMcKinnon说，撤下可疑的商品变得高效，已有上千款产品被移除。但是他说“篮子里的一滴。”麦金农称在任何时候在淘宝上平均仍有130，000件新百伦产品在他看来是假货或值得怀疑。阿里巴巴高管“要品牌商们高兴，但不仅是他们要高兴，”他说。“他们想要淘宝的卖家高兴，也要让消费者高兴。”
DuanGang（段刚），中国服装公司赫基国际集团的CEO助理说自2014年10月他们与阿里巴巴紧密合作以来，销售其旗下品牌欧时力服装的假货卖家总量降至5，000，下降了2/3。总部在华盛顿的国际反假冒联盟于2013年与阿里巴巴签署了一项谅解备忘录，以制定一项特殊项目，移除淘宝上的假货。该联盟雇佣了2名分析员和1名法官，详细研究了当时在此项目中的20家品牌商对淘宝的投诉。这一项目是一次“很好的合作关系，”该联盟的主席BobBarchiesi称。该项目现已包含了26个品牌。“人们有期待，希望［阿里巴巴］应该合理地处理这一问题。但这是一个人所共知的难题。”
日产汽车的WilliamForsythe并不为所动。他将他们品牌的警示隐藏在他对安全问题的担心之中：尤其是那些假冒的汽车配件，通过阿里巴巴的平台出售的，可能伤害中国的消费者——可能会让他们的产品进入汽车维修店和在美国的汽车商店（引人注目的是，阿里巴巴平台完全禁止销售安全气袋。）“他们是在用他们的左手数钱的，”Forsythe说，“并且用他们的右手捂住自己的眼睛。”
阿里巴巴真的需要处理的是三方支持者的关系：品牌商，卖家和，当然，是最终的买家。“一件假货将会让我们失去5位顾客，”马云说，“如果我们对此不加控制，我们会失去更多的顾客。”
为了更好地保护他们，淘宝有一个强制的系统：因为各种违法行为，以“划线”和“分数”的方式卖家会受到惩罚。出售假货将获得“一道线”，有了三或四道线之后，依据违规的性质，阿里巴巴将关闭此店铺。然而，这一模糊不清的系统给了店家充足的机会继续待在这一行业。例如，除非店家在一年之内累计太多的分数，否则其不良纪律最终会被抹掉，这纵容了哪怕最恶劣的违法者们继续经营着他们的店铺。那些被关闭的店家也可以换一个名字重新开店并继续他们的勾当。
那些在阿里巴巴平台上兜售假货的店家承认该公司比以往更加严格——但是并未严格到可以摧毁他们，而且他们可以仍然可以在不受处罚的前提下经营着他们的违法货品。以30多岁的S.Zhai为例，她在淘宝上开了两家店，销售普拉达、芬迪、巴黎世家在内的品牌包包和服饰的仿冒品。她的产品，来自于生产这些正品行货的中国工厂。质量控制部门的官员将一些残缺的包包和货物从正品的生产线上拿掉，并送到Zhai的后门。一些制造假货的厂家收购了一些被废弃的布料、皮革和其他原材料，把材料运到自家的工厂，然后雇佣那些在官方制造商那里工作的员工，制作出正品的仿制品，Zhai说她的淘宝店也销售这些产品。生意一直很好。好的时候，一天可以卖到11000美元。
Zhai的假货应该不难被发现。他们是对正品不折不扣的仿冒，有完全相同的品牌标志，然而她以折扣价销售，而且明确在其淘宝店门面上说，这不是官方正品。但是阿里巴巴却没有有效地阻止她这样做。在2010年她开始销售这些物品后不久，她的一家供货商被中国官方抓获，阿里巴巴关闭了她的第一家店。但是几个月之后，她却在相同的注册信息下重开了相同的店。请阿里巴巴的员工吃了大餐、送了礼物之后，他们解除了对她的限制，她又重操旧业继续卖假货。（阿里巴巴的一位发言人说，公司的政策是“对员工的欺骗行为零容忍。”）尽管如此，阿里巴巴的销售人员帮助推广她的网店。阿里巴巴抓住其违法行为5年之后，在2015年年中，她的第二家店被关闭。这次她想再重开网店就没有那么容易。她抱怨说，阿里巴巴这次迫使她提交一堆文件，如果要挑战公司对她的处罚。但是不要对Zhai抱有太多同情。她的第一家店也没有少卖假货。
C.Di，28岁，承受的来自阿里巴巴的压力要更少。她承认自己抄袭主要的奢侈品牌，如古琦、芬迪和菲拉格慕，然后在中国的广东省雇佣了一个工厂为她生产包包。Di在2013年开了第一家淘宝店，她赚得钱多到她辞掉了公务员的工作。每个月Di可以销售价值30，000美元的仿冒品，带给她多于1，500美元的收入。
然而，Di因为侵犯知识产权只被阿里巴巴处罚过一次——公司要求她停止出售仿版的菲拉格慕包包。在得到默许的情况下，她变聪明了，她把产品的设计稍做改变，与原版的产品看起来只有细微差别，以避开检查。但是她的一些货品仍然是明显的仿制品。近来她出售的一只MichaelKors的包包，内部的标签完全就是该公司的标记。在其产品描述中，她公开宣称制作该包的工厂就因为侵害了MichaelKors的知识产权而得到罚款。“淘宝有自己的法则，”她说。“经验老道的卖家知道如何更好地规避风险。”
对于喜欢古琦和尼桑的客户，以及成百上千万的消费者来说，Zhai和Di就是骗子。但是马云极大的骄傲就是为中国成百上万的穷人提供了一个做生意的机会，并为他们带来了福祉。他觉得对那些淘宝的店家——那些在依旧贫困的中国挣扎着获得财富的小人物们担负有责任。如果要保护知识产权只能居于其后，那么只能如此了。“这不是一个黑白是非的问题，”马云说。“如果你就说‘把它撤下来，’对那些人［店家］来说，这是不公平的。我们要保护的还有这些人，不仅仅是那些品牌厂商们。你不得不关心所有的人，他们的权利。”
这种我们至上的态度隐藏在阿里巴巴提交给美国证券交易委员会的文件当中。在2014年其首个公开提交的文件中，阿里巴巴坚持“对于假冒产品和造假行为，我们的态度是‘零容忍的’。”但是下一句便是：“由于很多商家的生计依靠我们的市场来维系，我们对品牌厂商的投诉整体上采取的是‘先发现问题，再问责’的手段。”
马云有太大的权力，太多的财富，可以满足太多的需求，因此即使对此最愤怒的品牌厂商也不得不扭着他的胳膊等他作出改变。当成百万的消费者，理论上，被淘宝的店家所欺骗，更多的人则是助纣为虐，以一种廉价的方式消费着奢侈品，在一个充实着廉价奢侈品的国家。就国内而言，对马云来说对简单的路就是维持现状。就国际而言，最谨慎的教训是要在此方面表现出重视。这是一种典型的中国政治思维，寻找一种和谐的解决方式，只是这次是在商业利益方面。
还记得原版阿里巴巴的命运是“芝麻开门”的美誉。同样地，他也有盗贼之患，同样地，他也要平衡各个部分的利益——贪婪的兄弟，忠实的奴仆和愤怒的贼人。
最终获得金子的是阿里巴巴本人。（JaneHo报道，翻译：张晶晶）
【英文原文】
Alibaba's$200 Billion Counterfeit Problem
WhyAlibaba's Massive Counterfeit Problem Will Never Be Solved
Thisstory appears in the November 23, 2015 issue of Forbes.
Theworld's biggest online retailer courses with an unprecedented torrent ofcounterfeit and sham goods, and neither the big brands, the Chinese governmentnor US pressure can do much about it. Jack Ma , the most powerful businessmanin Asia , can. But shutting down the fakes would undermine his Alibaba empire.
Bewarned: Jack Ma, the man who oversees the world's largest online retailer andwhom Forbes ranks as the 22nd most powerful person in the world, really doesn'tlike lawyers. Especially those attacking the very underpinnings of the $200billion empire he's built. As rail-thin as ever, Ma almost leaps off the sofain his Hangzhou office when talking about the fancy New York attorneys who havesued him for trademark infringement and trafficking in counterfeits on behalfof their client, Kering , the French luxury goods conglomerate that owns Gucciand Yves Saint Laurent. There's no chance, he insists, of settling.
“I would[rather] lose the case, lose the money,” says Ma. “But we would gain ourdignity and respect.”
Thatis true if he means respect in the eyes of the hundreds of thousands of smallChinese entrepreneurs who've made a living on Alibaba's online bazaar, calledTaobao. To Ma, whose Chinese retail sites handle five times the volume of eBay–lastyear $394 billion of, well, everything–these sellers are his lifeblood. To thesellers Ma is a hero of capitalism, offering them a path to the middle class.In the center of this social compact, however, is an unacknowledged truth: TheAlibaba juggernaut has been constructed to a significant degree on illegal,counterfeit products.
Thescale of the fakery is enormous–at any given time Taobao offers millions ofsuspect goods for sale, from handbags to auto parts, sportswear to jewelry.When Forbes searched for listings on Taobao with the word “Gucci” and set thepreferred price range under 300 yuan, or less than $50, well below the price ofreal Gucci products, 30,000 results popped up. The sellers of 4 of the items onthe first page confirmed in online chatting that they hire factories to producethese wares using the original design . A large number of the rest are ofdesigns similar to those of Gucci products, with slight alterations, such asthe replacement of the letter “G” in a handbag's pattern with “D.”
NetNames,a firm that helps brands fight online counterfeits, says that its clientsbelieve as much as 80% of the merchandise sold as theirs on Taobao is fake.That's backed up by Dan McKinnon, head of global brand protection atsneakermaker New Balance. Since the Boston company has no authorized dealers onTaobao, McKinnon figures that at least 80% of the supposed New Balance productssold over the site are counterfeit or suspicious. Alibaba, for its part,won't hazard an estimate.
Insome ways it can't afford to. Ma pulled off the world's biggest IPO last yearon the New York Stock Exchange, raising $25 billion. Alibaba's revenue morethan doubled over its last two fiscal years to $12.3 billion, while net incomenearly tripled , to $3.9 billion. Ma is personally worth $21.8 billion. Whatwould happen if Alibaba eradicated fake goods from its shopping sites–if thatwere even possible? Harley Lewin, a veteran intellectual property lawyer atMcCarter & English, has an opinion: “ They'd go broke.”
Mahas no interest in that outcome. But he also has incentive to get ahead of thenarrative prior to executing Alibaba's audacious next phase: moving from agiant in China to retail dominance worldwide . That requires building trustwith consumers everywhere–trust that could be undermined by a buyer-bewarereputation. “Jack Ma has made a lot of money,” says William Forsythe,brand-protection manager at the North American unit of Japanese automakerNissan Motor. “But if he is going to have a marketplace that has a globalfootprint, he needs to put a system in place to protect internationaltrademarks.”
That’sthe riddle for Ma: Can he crack down on fakes enough to be viewed globally assomeone who respects the sanctity of brands sold on his sites–but not enough tosink the small-time sellers who remain his rice bowl?
Thelonger Ma talks, the more it’s clear where his sentiments fall. Thesecond-richest man in China thinks the very idea of luxury retail–selling beltsand accessories and the like for thousands of dollars–is inherently absurd.“How can you sell Gucci or whatever branded bag for so much money? It isridiculous,” he says. “I understand the branded companies are not happy, but Ialso say that’s your business model. You have to check your business model,too.”
Theascent of Jack Ma and China itself are inextricably entwined. In 1999 theformer English teacher founded Ali-baba with 17 colleagues in his apartment inthe eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou. His first venture was thebusiness-to-business site Alibaba.com, which connects companies in the U.S. andelsewhere with suppliers in China. Then, in 2003, he launched Taobao. As Chinagrew into the world’s second-largest economy, Taobao, which translates to“search for treasures,” became the country’s premier Internet shopping site.Some 50% of Chinese online retail flows through Taobao, according to consultingfirm iResearch.
Mahimself lacked the standard traits that help businessmen get ahead in CommunistChina–political connections or an elite education. He barely made it intocollege. Yet he had the good fortune to cultivate high-profile business leadersat an early stage. While serving as a junior staffer at a government ministry,he was assigned to give a tour of the Great Wall to none other than Jerry Yang,cofounder of Yahoo , which became an early investor in Alibaba. As did Japan’sMasayoshi Son, founder of Softbank, and Goldman Sachs. Ma has proved equallyadept at handling the Chinese government, which still wields tremendousinfluence over the fate of private business. When China’s President Xi Jinpingvisited the U.S. and the United Kingdom in recent weeks, Jack Ma was with him.
Accusationsof rampant fakes dogged Alibaba and Taobao from the beginning, with Ma allalong asserting he was taking a tough stand. But as the site grew, so didcomplaints from established brands, and in 2008 the Office of the U.S. TradeRepresentative placed Taobao on its list of Notorious Markets, joining thelikes of Baidu and PirateBay.
Counterfeitingin China is nothing new. Back in the 19th century American merchants would havecheap copies of paintings made in Chinese workshops. But the counterfeitingprogram got exponentially worse after China began its historic shift towardfree-market capitalism in the 1980s. In fact, Ma sees his issue with bogusgoods as a direct outgrowth of China’s economic ascent. As the slumbering giantwoke up, factories making all sorts of consumer goods sprouted from thecountry’s rice paddies. Since the government paid little attention to protectingintellectual property–and the Chinese public developed a get-rich-quick fervor,still too common today–China became a haven for the production of fakes, fromcounterfeit sneakers to prescription drugs to pirated Hollywood movies.According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, nearly $1.1 billionworth of counterfeit goods from China and Hong Kong were seized entering thiscountry in fiscal 2014–88% of the total it uncovered.
Alibabafaced down a big scandal in early 2011, when it was revealed that some 100Alibaba salespeople knowingly set up fraudulent sellers who accepted paymentsfor but never delivered popular consumer electronics like laptops andflat-screen monitors. Ma gathered his senior executives in a bar in Hangzhoufor some soul-searching, along with an investigation into what happened. Thetake was small, maybe $2 million, but it involved more than 2,300 fakestorefronts. “The company was at risk of developing a culture of pursuingshort-term financial gain at all cost,” said Savio Kwan, the lead investigatorat the time. Alibaba.com’s CEO, David Wei, and Elvis Lee, its COO, left in thewake of the scandal even though neither was charged with any wrongdoing. Thatsame year Alibaba shut down a passel of counterfeiters on the site, sparking aprotest by hundreds of people organized by the sellers outside of Alibaba’sheadquarters. “We are probably the only company in China [where] seniormanagement takes responsibility,” Ma told FORBES in his first interview afterthe fraud scandal. “People think, ‘Jack, you do too much.’ I mean, too drastic.But I believe China needs this.”
Alibababegan working more closely with brands to tackle counterfeits, and that wasenough to convince the U.S. Trade Representative’s office to remove Taobao fromits blacklist in 2012. But the agency warned that Alibaba must make evengreater strides to avoid landing back on the list. The company’s steps alsoweren’t enough for a host of Western brands. Kering first sued Alibaba fortrademark infringement and trafficking in counterfeits in 2014, but withdrewthe complaint after the two companies agreed to discuss a settlement and a planto combat counterfeiters. Within less than a year, however, the talks had gonenowhere, and Kering decided to sue Alibaba again. The second lawsuit alleges,among a litany of complaints, that 37,000 counterfeit Gucci bags were sold onTaobao in one month alone in 2014, from 2,731 different shops. (An Alibabaspokesman counters that the Kering complaint “has no basis.”) In an October studyof marketplaces globally, the Trademark Working Group, whose 25 anonymousmembers include several major U.S. companies, identified Taobao as “still thelargest online platform for the sale of counterfeit goods.”
Eventhe Chinese government, which usually turns a blind eye to counterfeiting, haspressed Ma to tackle the problem. In January the State Administration forIndustry & Commerce, a government regulatory agency, released a surveyit had commissioned that revealed that only 37% of the goods it examined onTaobao were authentic. Then the agency posted to its website notes from a 2014meeting it held with Ali-baba executives in which it reportedly criticized thecompany’s anticounterfeiting efforts and other business practices. Alibaba, thereport charged, was facing a “credibility crisis” as a result. Alibaba conteststhese studies. During an earnings call with investors Joe Tsai, its vicechairman, lambasted the product survey for being “flawed” and “based onarbitrary methodology.” The government eventually yanked the meeting notes fromthe Web. Though Alibaba claimed victory, it also agreed to cooperate with theagency to better combat fakes.
JuanitaDuggan, CEO of the American Apparel & Footwear Association, an industrygroup that represents many brands victimized by Chinese fakes, says herorganization had been in intensive talks with Alibaba over ways the Chinesecompany could better protect brands, only to face resistance. “We’ve been goingaround and around in circles with them, and we were going nowhere,” Duggansays. Fed up, her group wrote the U.S. Trade Representative an official letterin April accusing Alibaba of being “either not capable of or interested inaddressing this problem.” It’s now campaigning to have Taobao return to theU.S. government’s Notorious Markets list, which functions mostly as a shamingmechanism.
In aletter to the U.S. Trade Representative, Alibaba’s vice president ofinternational government affairs, Eric Pelletier, responded that it wants tocooperate with Duggan’s trade group but that many of its demands were“unreasonable and unworkable.” Most tellingly, Alibaba said that acceding tothe footwear association’s wishes would force changes in its business model.“It is unreasonable to demand that Alibaba Group change fundamental aspects ofour business model as the price of collaboration,” wrote Pelletier.
There’sa war room at Alibaba’s headquarters, a campus of glass-and-steel office towerson the outskirts of Hangzhou housing 16,000 employees. Three floors down fromMa’s office, a large, flat-panel screen shows a map of China, flash pointspopping up every second or two. In a country notorious for its cyberespionage,particularly when it comes to business and trade secrets, Alibaba is spying onitself.
Morespecifically, it’s operating what is likely the largest private task -force inthe world devoted to fraudulent merchandise–2,000 strong, all of them employeesof Alibaba, which spent a combined $160 million in 2013 and 2014 on thiseffort. Head count is up fivefold since 2011. If we’re to judge Ma by hisactions rather than just words, this is the place to start. “If I say notolerance of counterfeit products,” he says, “then we mean it.”
Ma’sminister of defense is Polo Shao, a 20-year veteran of China’s police, whoexcitedly shows off the “big data” computer system Alibaba uses to sniff outcounterfeits. The map’s flash points denote Taobao transactions based onattributes such as a suspiciously low price, poor photo quality and the lengthof the product description. Transactions flagged as suspect get a follow-uplook before a decision is made to take them down.
Thesystem tallies the number of counterfeits pulled from the site–tens ofthousands that day alone. Other software can compare snapshots posted bysellers on their stores’ sites against official photos of the original goods ina quest to uncover illegal replicas. Shao claims the company removed 100million infringing products from Taobao in the past year alone, up from 14million in 2010. Ninety percent of those were found by Alibaba’s own team, hesays, rather than identified by the copied brands. “We are proactivelydiscovering these problems and solving them,” Shao says.
Evenwith advanced antifraud software and 2,000 sets of eyes, Alibaba is stillplaying the world’s biggest game of Whac-A-Mole. Some 100,000 new Taobao shopsare approved each day, and Shao says Ali-ba-ba can’t always know what they’reup to until they start selling. “We are far from perfect,” Shao admits. That’swhy Alibaba has also expanded its war into the real world. Two years agoAlibaba increased its cooperation with China’s police to help track down thepeople making and distributing counterfeit goods. The police have assigned twoofficers to Alibaba headquarters and are jointly developing software with thecompany to identify the sources of counterfeits, based on Ma’s data. Man Niu,director of the economic-crime investigation division of the public securitydepartment in Alibaba’s home province of Zhejiang, says that he rounded up 300suspects in 160 counterfeiting cases with the aid of Alibaba just sincemidsummer. “We are working better and better together,” Man says.
Alibabahas for years had a process by which brands can file take-down requests whenthey spot fakes, but brands had grumbled that the process was too confusing,the necessary paperwork too burdensome and Alibaba’s response too lethargic. Soin July Alibaba opened an English-language website through which brands canfile take-down requests; previously the platform was not entirely in English.Since April brands with a strong rec-ord of accurately spotting counterfeitshave been allowed into a “good faith” program with simplified and speedierprocesses to help pull fakes more quickly. Alibaba says the program reduces thetime it takes to remove a listing from three to five days to one to three days.That’s still a far cry from eBay, which says that it handled 92% of thecomplaints it received within 12 hours in 2014. “We are very open to partner,”Ma says. “We are the military fighting against the counterfeit terrorists. [Thebrands] have to work together with us instead of killing the soldiers.”
SinceNew Balance joined the “good faith” program, Dan McKinnon says, taking downsuspect products has become much more efficient, with thousands of listingsbeing removed. But he calls that “a drop in the bucket.” McKinnon claims thatat any given moment there are an average of 130,000 listings of New Balanceproducts on Taobao that he deems to be counterfeit or highly dubious. Alibaba’sexecutives “want the brands to be happy, but they don’t want only the brands tobe happy,” he says. “They want the users to be happy and the consumers to behappy.”
DuanGang, assistant to the CEO of Chinese apparel company Trendy InternationalGroup, says that the number of shops peddling counterfeits of itsOchirly-branded clothing dropped by two-thirds to 5,000 since it began workingmore closely with Alibaba in October 2014. The Washington-based InternationalAnti-Counterfeiting Coalition signed a memorandum of understanding with Alibabain 2013 to develop a special project to remove counterfeits from Taobao. Thecoalition hired two analysts and one attorney to review complaints from thethen 20 brands in the program before submitting them to Alibaba. The operationhas successfully scrubbed 130,000 counterfeit listings from Taobao. The programis a “great partnership,” says Bob Barchiesi, the coalition’s president. Theproject is now up to 26 brands. “People have expectations that [Ali-ba-ba]should be handling this right away. But it is a learning curve.”
Nissan’sWilliam Forsythe is less impressed. He wraps his brand vigilance in the cloakof safety concern: specifically that counterfeit auto parts, sold overAlibaba’s platforms, may hurt Chinese consumers–and make their way into bodyshops and automotive stores in the U.S. (Tellingly, Alibaba.com bans sales ofairbags entirely.) “They are counting the money with their left hand,” saysForsythe, “and covering their eyes with their right.”
Alibabaactually needs  to deal with threeconstituencies: brands,  sellers and, ofcourse, the end buyer. “One fake product is going to make us lose fivecustomers,” says Ma. “If we don’t control that, the more customers we lose.”
Toostensibly protect them, Taobao has an enforcement system: Merchants arepenalized with “strikes” and “points” for various transgressions. Sellingcounterfeits earns a “strike,” and after three or four “strikes,” depending onthe nature of the infringements, Alibaba shuts the shop. However, the confusingsystem gives a seller ample opportunities to stay in business. For instance,unless a seller accumulates too many points in a year, his record is eventuallywiped clean, allowing all but the most overt wrongdoers to keep their stores open.Those who get banned can just reregister their stores under a different nameand resume their sales.
TheChinese merchants who hawk counterfeits on Alibaba’s platforms concede that thecompany is getting tougher–but not enough to discourage them, and they stillmarket their illegal goods with near impunity. Take, for instance, 30-year-oldS. Zhai, who operates two Taobao stores selling counterfeit handbags andclothes from brands including Prada, Fendi and Balenciaga. Her products,believe it or not, come from the very Chinese factories that manufacture theauthentic items. Quality control officers yank handbags and other goods madefor the brands off the assembly lines for some sort of defect, then pass themout the back door to Zhai. Some counterfeiters also collect discarded fabrics,leather and other raw materials, ship them to their own factory, hire workersfrom the official manufacturer and assemble these pieces into replicas of thereal thing, which Zhai says she also sells on Taobao. Business has been brisk.On a good day she can rake in $11,000 in sales.
Zhai’scounterfeits should be easy to spot. They are exact copies of the original,complete with brand logos, yet she sells them at discounted prices and clearlystates on her Taobao storefront that they are not official goods. Yet Alibabahas done a poor job of stopping her. Soon after she began selling these itemsin 2010, one of her suppliers got nabbed by Chinese authorities, and Alibabashut down her first shop. But a few months later she was able to reopen underthe same registration and shop name. After buying Alibaba employees some nicedinners and gifts, it lifted the ban, and she went right back to selling theexact same counterfeits. (An Alibaba spokesman says that the company has a policyof “zero tolerance on fraudulent activities by our employees.”) Despite herrecord, Zhai says, Alibaba salesmen have offered services to help promote hersite. Five years passed before Alibaba caught up with her again. In mid-2015her second shop was shuttered. This time reopening its virtual doors hasn’tbeen as simple. She complains Alibaba is now forcing her to submit stacks ofpaperwork to challenge the company’s penalty. But don’t shed too many tears forZhai. Her first store continues to market as many fakes as ever.
C.Di, 28, has endured less pressure from Alibaba. She readily admits that shecopies designs from major luxury brands like Gucci, Fendi and Ferragamo, thenhires a factory in China’s Guangdong province to manufacture the handbags forher. Di opened her Taobao shop in 2013 and began making so much money that shequit her job as a civil servant. Each month Di sells some $30,000 worth ofrip-offs, bringing her more than $1,500 in income.
Nevertheless,Di has been penalized by Alibaba for intellectual property infringement onlyonce–the company asked her to stop selling a near-replica of a Ferragamo bag.Granted, she has gotten smarter at avoiding detection by tweaking the designsto make her products appear slightly different from the originals. But some ofher wares are still obvious copycats. She recently offered a Michael Korshandbag with the interior clearly covered with the company’s logo. In herproduct description she openly declared that the factory that made the handbaggot fined for infringement of Michael Kors’ intellectual property. “Taobao hasits own rules,” she says. “A veteran seller would know how to better avoidrisks.”
Zhaiand Di may be crooks to the likes of Gucci and Nissan, and millions ofcustomers. But Ma’s great pride is to have provided an opportunity for millionsof poor Chinese to start their own businesses and improve their welfare. Hefeels responsible for all those Taobao sellers–the little guys–striving to lifttheir fortunes in a still-poor China. And if upholding intellectual propertyrights comes second, well, so be it. “It’s not white and black,” Ma says. “Ifyou just say, ‘Take that down,’ it is unfair for that guy [the seller]. We haveto also protect these guys, not only the branded businesses. You have to careabout all the people, their rights.”
Theus-first attitude is encoded in Alibaba’s filings with the U.S. Securities& Exchange Commission. In one document for its 2014 initial publicoffering, Alibaba insisted that “we maintain a ‘no tolerance’ policy withregard to counterfeit and fictitious activities.” But the next sentence reads:“Because many sellers doing business on our marketplaces depend on us for theirlivelihood, we have generally eschewed a ‘shoot-first, ask questions later’ approachto handling complaints” from brands.
Mais too powerful, too rich and too in-demand for even the angriest of brands toarm-twist him to change. And while millions of customers are, in theory,getting ripped off by Taobao’s sellers, millions more are in on the racket,getting a cheap way to project luxury in a country obsessed with it.Domestically the easiest path for Ma is to maintain the status quo.Internationally the most prudent course is to demonstrate seriousness on thisissue. It’s classic Chinese political thinking, seeking a harmoniousresolution, only this time it’s among business interests.
Andremember the fate of the original Ali Baba of “open sesame” fame. He, too, hadtrouble with a band of thieves. He, too, had to deal with all sorts ofdivergent constituencies–the greedy brother, the loyal slave and the angrythieves
Inthe end it was Alibaba who wound up with all the gold.
Withreporting by Jane Ho.