Taobao responds to disputed inspection report

China's largest shopping website, Taobao.com, gave an official response to a controversial quality inspection report by the country's commerce regulator on Wednesday.

The online store will file a complaint to the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC) based on accusations of a senior official's improper supervision, according to an announcement on Taobao's Sina Weibo account.

"Director Liu Hongliang followed improper procedures and his legal assessment was emotional," Taobao said, "He reached a conclusion that was not objective, bringing a negative effect on Taobao and e-commerce businesses."

"We welcome any supervision that is fair but oppose nonfeasance and random or malicious official actions," the post said.

The move is the latest salvo between Taobao, the most profitable branch of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, and the SAIC since the latter published a quality inspection report on Jan. 23 that gave Taobao the lowest rank in terms of certified product rate.

FAIR OR NOT?

At the core of the quarrel is the question of whether or not Taobao was fairly treated.

The SAIC's sample test showed that only 37.25 percent of surveyed commodities sold on the website were authentic, lower than a 58.7-percent average of major online shopping platforms. Taobao's major rival, JD.com saw its rating at 90 percent.

Taobao fired back on Tuesday and said it was unfairly treated.

It claimed the inspection was flawed in logic and contradicted previous data, pointing out the authority only made a sample of 51 items which cannot represent the enormous trade volume on the platform.

The SAIC's survey had a 20-item sample for JD.com, a 10-item sample for Yhd.com and only a 1-item sample for Zol.com.

Tuesday's post was deleted shortly after but still stirred heated public debates with majority opinions in favor of the company.

Shi Yuzhu, a celebrity and board chairman of Giant Interactive Group, said the sample was too small compared to the website's 1 billion commodity categories (as Taobao claimed). "The sample was a little pale if statistically speaking," He said.

Responding to the claims, an SAIC official Yang Hongfeng said the survey just aimed to evaluate market risks and warn against illegal activities and no e-commerce firms were targeted.