Chinese Delivery Companies Are Selling ‘Empty’ Packages To Boost E-Commerce Sales

As if Alibaba’s counterfeit woes weren’t enough, the Chinese tech giant’s e-commerce platforms Taobao and Tmall were hit with more bad news on Monday.

An investigative report by The Beijing News (link in Chinese), a Chinese media company, was published yesterday, revealing China’s illegal market of “empty package scalping” (空包刷单, our translation), whereby shop owners on Taobao and Tmall inflate their sales statistics though fake package deliveries by using “empty package” service websites and delivery services.

“I wasn’t even in China, I never bought anything from these stores,” said one source in the report, who had left China for two months.

What you get

Full access to all premium content and our full archives

Members'-only newsletters

Preferential access and discounts to all TechNode events

Direct access to the TechNode newsroom