Jack¹ Ma, chairman of ecommerce group Alibaba, has blamed credulous² and “greedy” consumers for the prevalence of counterfeit³ goods available on the internet, adding that his company provides buyers with the tools to distinguish fakes from the genuine article.

电子商务集团阿里巴巴(Alibaba)董事局主席马云(Jack Ma)将互联网上假货泛滥归咎于易受骗和“贪心”的消费者，并补充称，他的公司向买家提供辨别真假的工具。

“If you want to buy a Rolex for Rmb25 [$4], you can only be blamed for being too greedy,” he told an audience at the World Internet Conference in the Chinese city of Wuzhen.

在浙江乌镇举行的世界互联网大会(World Internet Conference)上，马云称：“二十五块钱就想买一个劳力士手表，这是不可能的，这是你自己太贪了。”

Mr Ma’s comments were a departure from the usually contrite⁴ public message honed by Alibaba in the run-up to its record-breaking initial public offering in September, which raised $25bn.

9月阿里巴巴通过首次公开发行(IPO)创纪录地融资250亿美元之前，该公司对外传达的信息通常带有忏悔意味。马云此番言论标志着转向。

The issue of fake goods, and the difficulty in policing the roughly 8m third-party sellers on Alibaba’s eBay-like sales website Taobao, has long been a problem for the group. “The company takes the issue of counterfeit goods seriously and acts immediately to remove these goods from our ecosystem,” said Alibaba yesterday.

阿里巴巴旗下的电子商务网站淘宝(Taobao)类似于eBay，拥有近800万第三方卖家。假货问题、监管卖家之难，是该集团长期面对的问题。阿里巴巴近日表示，“公司认真对待仿冒品问题，一经发现，会立即把这些商品从我们的生态系统中剔除。”

Mr Ma challenged the belief in China that counterfeit goods were widely available on Taobao, which reported $200bn in sales in the year to June 30. “Many people say that Taobao and Alibaba is full of knock-offs, but those who say that have basically never shopped on Taobao. ” He added that consumers had the “power of judgment”. “Do you think we could achieve Rmb6.7bn in sales daily if the internet were full of counterfeit products?”

马云对中国普遍认为淘宝假货盛行的观点发出挑战。据报道，淘宝在截至6月30日的一年里销售额达到2000亿美元。“说假货多的人，肯定基本上从未在淘宝上买过东西。”马云补充称，消费者有“判断的权力”。“如果有假货，每天淘宝的销售额能有六七十亿元(人民币)吗？”

The comments received widespread play on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, and elicited⁶ some ridicule⁷ from Taobao shoppers. A user named “Fangfei” wrote: “Haha, I only shop on Taobao because they have high quality counterfeit products!”

马云的言论在中国版Twitter——微博(Weibo)——上引发热议，并招致一些淘宝买家的嘲笑。一个名为“芳菲”(音译)的用户写道：“哈哈，我只在淘宝上买东西，因为他们有优质的假冒产品！”

A five-minute trawl through Taobao yesterday netted a haul of a $78 Chanel watch, a $29 Louis Vuitton handbag and $6 Dior perfume, but Rmb25 Rolex watches were nowhere to be found.

记者昨天在淘宝上查找5分钟，就发现了78美元的香奈儿(Chanel)手表、29美元的路易威登(Louis Vuitton)手袋和6美元的迪奥(Dior)香水，但怎么也找不到25元人民币的劳力士(Rolex)手表。

Taobao began checking third-party sellers after being named a “notorious market” by the US trade representative for violations⁸ of intellectual property rights in the four years to 2011.

美国贸易代表因淘宝在截至2011年的4年里侵犯知识产权而称其为一个“臭名昭著的市场”，此后淘宝开始检查第三方商家。