Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Wednesday denied allegations of forcing people to shop after teachers from Henan Province were reportedly forced to pay up to 2,000 yuan ($322) on Taobao, Alibaba's online shopping platform and China's largest.
Xiang Ying, an Alibaba media officer, told the Global Times on Wednesday that this is the first time the company has faced such an allegation and denied its employees forced people to buy on the platform.
Teachers in Linru county were allegedly forced to shop online on Wednesday, with principals ordered to spend 2,000 yuan and others to buy products worth at least 500 yuan to support a local entrepreneur, news site thepaper.cn reported.
"The local education authority requires teachers to shop and those who fail to do so have to face consequences," an online notice said.
A Taobao shop opened in Ruzhou on Wednesday, of which Linru county is part, which provides an e-commerce platform for local villagers to peddle their products.
A Linru government official, surnamed Han, told the Global Times on Wednesday that the schools just misunderstood the previous publicity efforts to encourage people to shop online, which said that there will be gifts for shopping online as rewards and better gifts will be given if they spend more money.
An employee at the Linru education department admitted that authorities had ordered teachers to shop online "because shopping online is cheaper," but recalled the order after receiving complaints, thepaper.cn reported.
Alibaba plans to invest 100 billion yuan to establish 1,000 county-level service centers and 100,000 village-level stations in five years, which will gradually help develop its e-commerce business in rural areas. The first shop was opened in Tonglu, East China's Zhejiang Province in March.
Alibaba said e-commerce revenue from rural areas reached 180 billion yuan in 2014.
Problems surfaced as e-commerce companies expanded businesses in rural areas, including logistical ones.
Some customers said they are also concerned about the quality of products sold by villagers.
