BEIJING, February 18 (TMTPOST)— Chinese government urged the Biden administration to stop the action with political overtones against Chinese e-commerce markets following some of popular online markets added to a black list for counterfeiting and piracy.

Source: Visual China

AliExpress, a B2C platform owned by Alibaba Group, and the e-commerce ecosystem of Tencent’s messaging platform WeChat were for the first time added to the Notorious Markets List, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) announced its findings of the 2021 Review of Notorious Markets for Counterfeiting and Piracy on Thursday. The two significant China-based online markets added recently were reported to facilitate substantial trademark counterfeiting, and China-based online markets Baidu Wangpan, DHGate, Pinduoduo, and Taobao continue to be listed, as well as nine physical markets located within China that are known for the manufacture, distribution, and sale of counterfeit goods, according to a USTR statement.

The Notorious Markets List, which has published annually since 2011, aims to increase public awareness and help market operators and governments prioritize intellectual property enforcement efforts that protect American businesses and their workers. It does not reflect findings of legal violations or the U.S. Government’s analysis of the general intellectual property protection and enforcement climate in the country concerned. It turned out that the list was a useful tool for U.S. government to get companies, especially larger ones, to make more efforts for anti-piracy and counterfeiting, noted Robert Holleyman, the former Deputy Trade Representative under President Barack Obama. In Thursday’s statement, the USTR Ambassador Katherine Tai implied Chinese online marketplaces’ alleged violations of intellectual property pose risks to U.S. “The global trade in counterfeit and pirated goods undermines critical U.S. innovation and creativity and harms American workers,” said Tai.

“We urge the US side to stop politicizing economic and trade issues, view Chinese companies’ efforts and achievements in IPR protection in a comprehensive, objective and just manner, and foster an open, fair, just and non-discriminatory business environment for Chinese and US companies to conduct cooperation on the basis of equality, mutual benefit and mutual respect, so as to promote the sound and steady development of China-US economic and trade ties,” Wang Wenbin, the spokesperson of China’s Foreign Ministry, commented on the USTR move at a regular press conference on Friday. Wang stressed that China always attaches high importance to the protection of property rights. China approved and authorized a total of 110,000 invention patents from overseas applicants in 2021, with a 23% year on year increase, and there were 194,000 trademarks registered by overseas applicants, up 5.2% from a year ago, Wang cited data as the evidence to foreign companies’ confidence on the country’s business environment.

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