 "A logo of Alibaba Group is pictured at its headquarters in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, China. Photo: Reuters")
It's hardly a happy new year for Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Just before Christmas, the US 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 specialises 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 and other online marketplaces dependent on Chinese manufacturers, it has struggled to maintain
