July 30 (NBD) -- JD Worldwide, a cross-border B2C platform under Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com for brand stores selling into China from the outside, has forged partnership Thursday with four quality inspection institutions to establish a quality testing alliance and launched 35 quality control measures covering the entire sales process.

In May this year, JD.com was caught up in a fake product case in which the e-commerce platform was accused of delivering counterfeit Kweichow Moutai Flying Fairy 43%. The company explained later that the real products were swapped for counterfeits during shipment. 

The quality testing alliance was just set up under such circumstance to ensure the quality of products sold on the platform.

The Chinese cross-border e-commerce market registered a turnover of 7.6 trillion yuan (1.1 trillion U.S. dollars) at the end of 2017, and the figure is forecasted to reach 9 trillion yuan (1.3 trillion U.S. dollars), according to internet data analysis institution iiMedia Research.

Along with the increase in purchases of overseas products is the growing product quality complaints.

Data released by the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine of China in January this year shows that last year, the defect rate of selected samples of imported consumer products including home appliances, clothes, household textiles, toothbrushes, and wet wipes was 28.3 percent. In February this year, the China Consumers Association published a research report on online shopping experience for the Double 11 Shopping Festival of 2017, which says out of the 53 samples of products bought online from overseas, 16 were suspected counterfeits. 

By announcing 35 quality control measures, JD Worldwide attempts to deal with the pain points of cross-border trade, such as absence of product information transparency, slow delivery and difficulty in changing and returning products, said Yang Ye, general manager of JD Worldwide. 

One of the measures is that merchants would pay a penalty of 150,000 U.S. dollars or ten times as much as its total sales volume if they were found to sell counterfeits or non-original products.

Apart from the measures, the upgrade of the regulation concerning the whole sales process is also necessary, Yang further pointed out.

E-commerce platforms now are able to regulate product quality through upgraded technology methods, such as qualification check, deposit policy, sampling inspection and introduction of blockchain technology, said Zhao Zhanling, special researcher at the Center for Intellectual Property Rights of China University of Political Science and Law.

More importantly, Chinese authorities should also share product information with those platforms, Zhao added.

Email: zhanglingxiao@nbd.com.cn