As China prepares for Singles Day, the world’s largest online shopping event, on Thursday, Beijing-based consumer rights lawyer Wang Hai is gearing up for a record volume of cases.

在中国准备迎来“光棍节”、即全球最大的网上购物节之际，常驻北京的职业打假人王海也在为迎接创纪录的案件量做着准备。

Mr Wang has made a 20-year career of pursuing false advertising cases and complaints over fake merchandise. Singles Day, which last year saw more than $10bn in total merchandise sold online by the likes of Alibaba and JD.com, is also China’s biggest day for fake goods.

王海处理虚假广告和假冒商品投诉案件已有20年时间。去年光棍节，阿里巴巴(Alibaba)和京东(JD.com)等电商的线上商品销售总额超过了100亿美元，而这个节日也成了中国最大的“假货节”。

Mr Wang pays special attention to Taobao, Alibaba’s eBay-like consumer marketplace that American clothing retailers are trying to have listed on the US government’s anti-piracy blacklist.

王海尤其关注淘宝(Taobao)——阿里巴巴旗下类似于eBay的C2C市场。美国服装零售商正呼吁美国政府将淘宝列入反盗版黑名单。

The number of complaints over fake or shoddy online merchandise registered by the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, the Chinese regulator, has increased 356 per cent since 2013. The SAIC said in a recent report that four of every 10 products bought online in China are either bad quality or fake.

2014年，中国全国工商和市场监管部门受理网络购物投诉数量比上年增长356%。中国国家工商总局(SAIC)在近期一份报告中表示，网购商品非正品率超四成。

Alibaba, which accounts for 65-70 per cent of China’s annual ecommerce of roughly $450bn-$500bn, insists it is improving its monitoring and refund policies. The company, which also operates Tmall, a website for larger sellers, says it employs 2,000 monitors and has 5,400 volunteer “phantom shoppers” to comb through its websites looking for suspicious goods.

2014年全年，中国全国网上零售额大概在4500亿至5000亿美元之间，其中阿里巴巴占比65%到70%。该公司坚称自己正在改善监督和退款政策。阿里巴巴表示自己雇佣了2000名巡查员，还拥有5400名志愿“影子购物者”，共同负责线上巡查打假。阿里巴巴旗下网站还包括为较大商家提供的零售平台“天猫”(Tmall)。

Alibaba says the SAIC data on rising complaints are “about our competitors, and not about us”, and that the number of complaints has been “significantly reduced” since last year. It says it now gets fewer than two complaints about counterfeit goods in every 10,000 purchases.

阿里巴巴表示，中国国家工商总局所统计的不断增加的投诉数量是“关于我们竞争对手的，不是关于我们的”，并认为自去年以来投诉数量一直“显著减少”。阿里巴巴表示，现在它的平台上与假冒商品有关的投诉占比不到万分之二。

But according to Mr Wang and other lawyers, Alibaba and its ecommerce peers prioritise defending large online sellers, which account for most of their revenue in the form of commissions and advertising fees.

但根据王海和其他打假人的说法，阿里巴巴及其电商同行会把保护大型线上商家放在首位。电商的佣金和广告费收入大多来自这些商家。

“The interests of these large sellers comes before anything else,” says Mr Wang.

王海说：“这些大商家的利益优先于其他一切事情。”

One perennial complaint from Chinese consumers about Alibaba is that they are often required to provide a certificate that a product is fake before the company will act against the seller. Such certificates are difficult or impossible to come by as many companies do not issue them.

中国消费者常年抱怨阿里巴巴的一件事情是，消费者往往需要提供商品为假货的证明，阿里巴巴才会对商家采取行动。但这类证明很难或无法获得，因为许多公司不提供。

Tian Junwei, a consumer rights lawyer who works for Mr Wang’s firm and specialises in suing ecommerce companies over fakes, says such certificates are the single biggest issue for consumers trying to get refunds. “We get a lot of customer complaints but it’s very tricky to act upon, so most of the consumers don’t pursue it,” he says.

田军伟也是王海所在机构的一位保护消费者权益的人士，专门负责处理针对电商企业的假货案件。他表示，这类证明是消费者想获得退款的最大障碍。他说：“我们收到很多客户的投诉，但很难采取行动，所以大多数消费者放弃了追究。”

Alibaba insists it puts consumers first. “We take the fight against counterfeiting very seriously and devote significant resources to take on those who seek to harm consumers,” it says, adding that the burden of proof in a dispute is always on the seller.

阿里巴巴坚称，公司把消费者摆在第一位。该公司表示，“我们非常重视打击假冒伪劣商品，投入了大量资源打击意图损害消费者利益的人”，并补充道，发生争议时的举证责任总是由卖家来承担的。

However, several buyers say they have been asked for a certificate of inauthenticity at the start of the refund stage.

然而，几名买家表示，退款阶段的第一步就是要求他们提交假货鉴定证明。

When queried on that point, Alibaba said on Tuesday that while under Taobao’s policy the burden of proof was on the seller, “on Tmall there is a burden of proof on the consumer to prove that the product is fake”.

面对这方面的询问，阿里巴巴周二表示，尽管在淘宝的政策下，举证责任由卖家承担，但“在天猫上，由消费者承担举证责任，证明商品是假货”。

The Financial Times was shown correspondence between one customer and a Tmall customer service representative after the customer sought a refund in September for an expensive brand of colouring books he believed were fake. He was told by the representative that “as long as you provide a fake goods certificate with test results, and launch a case against knock-off brands, you will get a refund”.

一名顾客向英国《金融时报》展示了他与一名天猫客服代表之间的对话消息。这名顾客认为自己购买的一套价格不菲的品牌涂色书是假货，并于9月要求退款。天猫客服代表告诉他，“只要您能提供附有检验结果的假货证明，并对假冒品牌发起保障维权，您就能获得退款”。

An investigation in March by daily newspaper Beijing News found that certificates of inauthenticity were “almost impossible to obtain” in China. Journalists said they had called 50 different government agencies and offices and that they were unable to get one.

《新京报》今年3月的一次调查发现，消费者在中国几乎不可能取得假货鉴定证明。记者们表示，给50个不同的政府机构和办公室拨打电话后，他们依然没能拿到一张鉴定证明。

In the colouring book case, the seller ultimately volunteered that the item was fake and agreed to a refund. The buyer, a Suzhou-based stock broker who gave his name as Mr Song, says: “I was lucky that I was dealing with an inexperienced sales representative who admitted that it was fake. If they had denied it, I would have no way of collecting evidence.”

在涂色书的案子里，卖家最终主动承认商品是假冒的，并同意退款。买家是苏州的一名股票经纪人，他要求被具名为宋先生，他表示：“我很幸运，遇到了一个没有经验的销售代表，自己承认产品是假的。如果他们否认，我根本没有办法收集证据。”

The vendor is still selling on Tmall.

目前这个商家依然在天猫上销售商品。

Alibaba is not alone in the spotlight. JD.com’s direct sales site has received fewer complaints but has still come in for criticism. The company also operates a marketplace-like service with third-party sellers who are harder to police. Last month JD.com was criticised after it stationed employees at the Beijing branch of the SAIC. Mr Wang said the staff were “impersonating” SAIC staff over the phone and handling complaints, although JD.com said its staff were merely a liaison group who “neither handle nor adjudicate customer issues”.

阿里巴巴并非唯一备受瞩目的商家。京东的自营业务受到的投诉较少，但是仍然遭到批评。该公司还运营着类似于网上集市的服务，上面是更难以监管的第三方卖家。上月京东因向北京工商局派驻员工而受到指责。王海称，该员工在电话中“冒充”工商局公务员处理投诉，尽管京东表示其员工只是“既不处理也不裁决消费者投诉”的联络员。

Consumers are not the only ones to have complained about fake goods. Foreign retailers losing sales to counterfeits from China have harsh words for Alibaba.

并非只有消费者对假货有所抱怨。被中国的仿冒品抢走销售额的外国零售商对阿里巴巴也多有指责。

Juanita Duggan, president and chief executive of the American Apparel & Footwear Association, says the procedures retailers must go through to get fakes taken off Taobao are “nightmarish”.

美国服装和鞋类协会(American Apparel & Footwear Association)总裁兼首席执行官朱厄妮塔达根(Juanita Duggan)称，零售商若想让假货从淘宝下架，其必须走的流程犹如“噩梦”一般。

First, retailers must register their brands with Alibaba, a process she says is “marked by delays, submissions and resubmissions of brand authenticating documents, and repeated and unexplained rejections”.

首先，零售商必须在阿里巴巴上注册其品牌，达根称这一过程“充满拖延，要反复提交、再提交品牌认证文件，并遭到原因不明的反复拒绝”。

“Assume you succeed in registering. Now, you can submit a request to take down a fake product,” she says.

“假设你成功注册了品牌。现在，你可以提交让假冒商品下架的请求，”她称。

But she says such requests usually go unanswered. And if a retailer pursues claims, that hurts the brand’s “classification with Alibaba as a ‘good faith reporter’, reducing its ability in the future to bust counterfeiters”.

但她表示，这类请求通常都会石沉大海。同时，如果零售商要求索赔，这将损害该品牌“在阿里巴巴的‘诚信报告者’分类，削弱其未来戳穿造假者的能力”。

Ms Duggan says that even if the fake product is removed from the site, “the next day, the same item with the same picture will be for sale again but with a black bar covering the logo showing that the item is a counterfeit.

达根称，即使假冒商品从网站上删除，“隔天也会有带有同样照片的相同商品再次销售，不过会带有遮住品牌标识的黑条，表明该商品是仿冒品”。

“But Alibaba says it cannot take down this counterfeit item because it can’t be proven to be a branded product.”

“但是阿里巴巴称不能将该仿冒品下架，因为不能证明它是品牌商品。”

Alibaba says it is committed to improving how it tackles counterfeit goods. “We continue to successfully work with many AAFA clients to protect their intellectual property rights. We remain committed to the protection of intellectual property rights as we continue the long-running battle to eradicate counterfeit merchandise that may appear on our marketplaces.”

阿里巴巴称，其正致力于改进处理假冒商品的方式。“我们继续与来自美国服装和鞋类协会的很多客户成功合作，保护其知识产权。我们仍致力于保护知识产权，继续为根除可能出现在我们集市上的假冒产品打持久战。”

Mr Wang, however, says that as long as there is a market for them, there will be fake goods.

然而，王海表示，只要假货还有市场，就会有假货。