WeChat one of major fake goods marketplace, USTR report
Business
Infamous markets list includes Chinese AliExpress, Baidu Wangpan, DHGate, Pinduoduo and Taobao
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - WeChat, China s most popular messaging app, was named as one of the main venues for counterfeit goods in a report released on Tuesday by the office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) which claimed that China leads the world in the production of fake and pirated goods.
The most recent report from the US government on "notorious markets" stated, "counterfeit and pirated goods from China together with transshipped goods from China to Hong Kong accounted for 75 percent of the value of counterfeit and pirated goods seized by US Customs and Border Protection in 2021."
The US government has identified 33 physical marketplaces and 39 online markets that allegedly participate in or enable widespread copyright infringement or trademark infringement.
This includes keeping track of the WeChat e-commerce ecosystem as one of the principal distribution channels for fake goods in China, it continued.
Tencent Holdings Limited, a Chinese technology company, is the owner of WeChat which is the most widely used messaging app in China and has more than a billion active users.
According to the research, WeChat offered an e-commerce environment that made it easier for users of the whole WeChat network to distribute and buy fake goods.
Along with seven physical markets in China, which increasingly employ brick-and-mortar stores to facilitate online sales of counterfeits, the list of infamous markets also includes China-based online marketplaces AliExpress, Baidu Wangpan, DHGate, Pinduoduo and Taobao.
Early in 2022 the US Government put Tencent s and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd s e-commerce platforms to its list of infamous marketplaces.
At the time the Chinese government had declared that it disagreed with the American government s inclusion of several e-commerce websites in the list labelling the move as "irresponsible."
