Alibaba and JD.com shares fell as much as 5.9% in Hong Kong on June 11 after Beijing’s market regulator reprimanded Chinese ecommerce platforms over allegedly misleading 618 shopping festival promotions.

The Beijing branch of the State Administration for Market Regulation summoned Alibaba, JD.com, PDD Holdings, ByteDance, and Xiaohongshu over alleged false advertising.

Officials said some platforms promoted subsidies worth tens of billions of yuan without clearly saying how much merchants and brands actually offered.

Officials said Alibaba’s Taobao and Tmall, as well as JD.com, failed to disclose those details.

China’s Advertising Law requires promotional claims and giveaways to be accurate, clear, and explicit.

False advertising can lead to fines of 3x to 5x advertising costs, or 1 million to 2 million yuan (US$295,000) if those costs cannot be calculated or appear unusually low.

🔗 Source: Bloomberg

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