The Chinese online retail platform AliExpress has been fined a record €550m (£470m) by the EU over its failure to stop illegal goods including harmful clothing, cosmetics and kitchen gadgets being sold through its site. The European Commission fine is the biggest imposed by the bloc under the Digital Services Act (DSA), legislation that came into force in 2024 to protect consumers from illegal goods, deceptive or addictive marketing techniques. Henna Virkkunen, the commission’s executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy, said: “The spread of counterfeit clothing, unsafe toys,…
Tag: Alibaba
BYD and Alibaba among big names aiding China’s military, Pentagon says
The US added Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba, internet search provider Baidu and automaker BYD to a list of companies it believes are aiding Beijing’s military, in a move that could inflame tensions between the countries. The long-awaited update released on Monday supersedes a list from early 2025, and comes less than a month after Donald Trump met China’s Xi Jinping on a visit to Beijing, where the two leaders maintained a delicate trade war truce. The list now includes a broad swathe of China’s top technology firms key to advancing…
More private health records of UK Biobank volunteers appear on Chinese website
There have been further listings of confidential health records of UK volunteers on the Chinese website Alibaba since the breach reported last week, and the government is braced for further leaks, the science minister has said. Addressing a House of Lords debate on the attempted sale of data belonging to 500,000 UK Biobank volunteers, Patrick Vallance said the government had worked with Chinese officials to remove additional postings on the online marketplace. “New listings will emerge – there have been additional listings posted since the government were made aware of…
Private health records of half a million Britons offered for sale on Chinese website
The confidential health records of half a million British volunteers have been offered for sale on Chinese website Alibaba, the UK government has confirmed. The data, belonging to participants in the UK Biobank project, was found for sale on three separate listings last week. The records have now been removed and it is not believed any sales were made. The latest breach comes after the Guardian revealed last month that UK Biobank data had been exposed online dozens of times and will raise further questions about whether security has been…
China lags behind US at AI frontier but could quickly catch up, say experts
Beijing’s AI policy is focused on real-life applications but Chinese companies are beginning to articulate their own grand visions Standing on stage in the eastern China tech hub of Hangzhou, Alibaba’s normally media-shy CEO made an attention-grabbing announcement. “The world today is witnessing the dawn of an AI-driven intelligent revolution,” Eddie Wu told a developer conference in September. “Artificial general intelligence (AGI) will not only amplify human intelligence but also unlock human potential, paving the way for the arrival of artificial superintelligence (ASI).” ASI, Wu said, “could produce a generation…
Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma implicated in intimidation campaign by Chinese regime
The Chinese regime enlisted Jack Ma, the billionaire co-founder of Alibaba, in an intimidation campaign to press a businessman to help in the purge of a top official, documents seen by the Guardian suggest. The businessman, who can be named only as “H” for fear of reprisals against his family still in China, faced a series of threats from the Chinese state, in an attempt to get him to return home from France, where he was living. They included a barrage of phone calls, the arrest of his sister, and…
Belgian intelligence investigating logistics hub of China’s Alibaba at local airport
Belgian officials are looking into risks around the presence of China’s Alibaba Group Holding at a cargo airport in the city of Liège, the country’s state security service (VSSE) said in a statement on Thursday. Referring to the company’s main European logistics centre at Liège Airport, the security service said it was working to “detect and fight against possible spying and/or interference activities carried out by Chinese entities including Alibaba”. Belgian authorities are looking into Alibaba’s operations at the airport based on an analysis of China’s legal framework, the statement…
China to take ‘golden shares’ in tech firms Alibaba and Tencent
China is to take “golden shares” in two of its biggest tech companies, Alibaba and Tencent, as Beijing extends its influence on the country’s star tech firms and its most powerful and wealthy business people. Beijing’s move marks a shift away from imposing hefty fines and sanctions in its two-year tech crackdown, which was launched after Alibaba founder, Jack Ma, criticised regulators, The crackdown has proved tumultuous for Chinese tech firms, with billions wiped off their value, and moves including blocking the flotation of Ma’s financial services firm, Ant Group,…
Jack Ma to give up control of China’s Ant Group, firm says
China’s Ant Group says it will adjust its shareholding structure so that its billionaire founder, Jack Ma, will no longer hold control over the fintech giant. “No shareholder, alone or jointly with other parties, will have control over Ant Group” after the completion of the adjustment, the company said in a statement on Saturday. The move marks another big development after a regulatory crackdown that scuppered Ant’s $37bn initial public offering (IPO) in late 2020 and led to a forced restructuring of the financial technology company. While Ma owns only…
China’s indebted property sector highlights a fading economic revival
China’s economy has become heavily dependent on property development over the last decade. High-rise apartments have mushroomed across hundreds of cities to house a growing white-collar workforce, while glass and steel office blocks are dominating city centres, mimicking Shanghai’s glittering skyline. Valued at more than $50tn after 20 years of rapid growth, Chinese real estate is worth twice as much as the US property market and four times China’s annual income. George Magnus, an associate at Oxford University’s China Centre, says this real estate market ranks as the most important…