As China’s internet economy develops, practices of giving bribes has taken new forms that may be unique to the country’s e-commercial world. In the year of 2020, there was a concluded court case concerning commercial bribery in the context of e-commerce shedding light on the novel situation that gives rise to criminal liabilities.
One of the defendants in this case was identified with his/her surname as Zhang. Zhang became associated with Fang who was the man at the wheel at an e-commerce platform by virtue of work. From June 2017 to July 2018, Fang helped Zhang repeatedly log onto the platform with same operation address. Then Fang managed to get more promotion vouchers and exclusive sales opportunities for the online shop that Zhang operated through Fang’s position of convenience. As a result, Zhang’s shop gained a lot of visibility online and significantly reduced its operation costs, thereby obtaining competitive advantages over other shops. For Fang’s help, Zhang continuously gave him cash benefits totalling 97,950 yuan (about USD 14,000).
The court determined that Zhang conveyed financial interest to private company personnel for the purposes of obtaining illegal benefit, which amounts to offences of offering bribes to non-state functionaries. Zhang’s conviction brought him four months suspended jail sentence and 5000 yuan (about USD 735) in fines.
Although e-commercial activities are not exclusive to China, the country does seem to have a rather active online economy. There are many internet platform companies in the country that are actively participating in this economy and they have platform rules that are different from one another. Such an online ecosystem is very responsive to changing demands and major sales period. Consequently, shops that are operating in this ecosystem have a real need for greater visibility and internet traffic; on the other hand, persons managing these e-commerce platforms possess real power in subsidising these businesses with online visibility and have ample wriggle-room for doing so. These factors all contribute to a complicated online economy that is currently slipping the regulatory radar and is therefore easy to give rise to corruptions.
As virtual shopping becomes increasingly popular among Chinese consumers, plenty of non-Chinese brands that operate in China have taken advantage of the convenience of the internet to run shops virtually. However, one needs to take stock of what is happening in the regulatory field so as to stave off hefty disruptions to one’s business, administrative and/or possible criminal liabilities.
