Employees work at a Tmall logistic centre in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, China, October 28, 2015. On China's giant Singles Day internet shopping festival, the country's delivery firms are stretched so thin that they are looking for tie-ups, listings and new investors to husband their resources. E-commerce has been a huge boon to the logistics industry, but the ever-bigger Singles Day, run by leading online market company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd on Nov. 11 every year, exacerbates the industry's twin dilemmas of cut-throat competition and rising labor costs. With low barriers to entry, express couriers proliferated rapidly over the past decade to more than 8,000 firms, squeezing profit margins to about 5 percent, down from 30 percent 10 years ago, according to analysts. Picture taken October 28, 2015. To match CHINA-SINGLES DAY/LOGISTICS REUTERS/Aly Song
WASHINGTON/SHANGHAI: Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd has avoided being named on a US blacklist for sites hosting the sale of fake goods, a victory for the firm after lobbying hard to avoid inclusion on the list.
The US Trade Representative (USTR) said, though, it was "increasingly concerned" about Alibaba's enforcement programmes and warned it must make a greater effort to stop the sale of pirated and counterfeit products on its online platforms.
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