Every year on November 11, e-commerce giant Alibaba makes business headlines with its sales record on Singles Day, a holiday celebrating China’s single men and women that has become a popular online shopping day. This year, the company racked up US$9.3 billion, almost doubled last year’s US$ 5.8 billion.
The news came about two months after Alibaba set the record for the world’s largest initial public offering (IPO) in the US stock market, with its market value measured asUS$231 billion at closing time on its first day.
Alibaba’s rosy prospects are to a large extent a result of its monopolized status in China’s online shopping market. Yet to maintain such privilege, it has to work closely with the government and the Chinese Communist Party in sanctioning independent organizations and political dissents.
In September, not long before Alibaba’s began trading on the US stock market, the Taobao online shop of an independent library project called China Rural Library (CRL) was forced to shut down while the authorities cracked down its 19 libraries across the country. The CRL’s main income for its education and library project has been generated from its online shop. The Chinese authorities consider independent citizen initiatives a challenge to the Chinese Community Party’s representation of the people.
A few days ago, Amazon-like Taobao, which is owned by Alibaba, shut down artist Wu Tun’s online shop, which sold T-shirts with the phrase “Love Can’t Be Here” printed on them. The Chinese character for “love” sounds like “Ai,” and the T-shirt is inspired by an overseas campaign, “Ai Can’t be Here,” which calls for the release of Ai Weiwei, an artist-activist who was detained for 81 days without any official charges in 2011. Currently Ai is still monitored by the national security police and could not leave the country.
Prominent political dissident Hu Jia explained to Radio Free Asia how the authorities have suppressed dissents via online shops:
Political dissidents have not only criticized Taobao. The monopolized market means small retailers face vicious competition, of which only a minority of shops survive.
A small retail shop owner explained the adverse effects of the monopoly on online shopping business in China. The article circulated online for a period of time and Letscorp, a website that bridges information across the Chinese-speaking community, reposted it on November 13, 2014: