VideoAlibaba will let West ‘better understand its business’ through US class action suit: Jack Ma

Jack Ma, the outspoken chairman of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, spoke to a crowd of almost 7,000 people in Hong Kong on Monday night. Below are some selected questions and answers during Ma's speech and a following media session, in which he spoke about the latest fake merchandise controversy facing Alibaba's Taobao unit, and his opinions on Hong Kong's young people and their politics. 

 

ON FAKE GOODS ON TAOBAO

Q: Today it was found that so-called “Suwen University of Hong Kong”, a fake university, sells diplomas over taobao.com. Do you have a monitoring system on Taobao?

 

Ma: We do have a monitoring system but it is complaint-based. We have 1.2 billion items on the platform for sale. If you complain, we will definitely find out the [fakes]. But if you don’t, it’s hard to detect… Taobao has 2,000 staff who do the monitoring. Last year we sent 400 people to jail [for selling fakes]. The work is not easy, and you offend a lot of people. We will deal with your complaint [on Suwen University] immediately.

 

Q: How are you dealing with the possible class-action suit in the US against Alibaba?