ON MONDAY, DOMESTIC E-COMMERCE GIANT ALIBABA announced that in 2016 it had found 4,495 instances of businesses making or selling fake goods. The judiciary investigated 1,184 of them, yet only 33 people have received sentences. Beijing News comments:

Fake goods have always been a major headache for Alibaba. Yet the number of people found guilty of making and selling fake goods is so small that people accuse the judiciary of not enforcing the law properly.

This is not the case, as the judiciary has on several occasions vowed to strike the illegal interest chain of counterfeit goods. The true cause is Alibaba has the information while the judiciary has the power, yet the two do not work well together to tackle the issue.