China to continues action against online counterfeits

BEIJING -- China will continue to act against fake goods sold on the Internet as the e-commerce boom continues, an official said on Thursday.

"We will maintain our hard-line stance in our campaigns this year, with cyberspace the main battlefield," Ministry of Commerce (MOC) spokesperson Sun Jiwen told a Thursday press conference.

The MOC will work across regions and cooperate with businesses to use big data to track piracy.

With the world's largest online shopping platform, China continues to grapple with counterfeit products. In 2016, more than 170,000 cases of IPR infringement and counterfeit products were dealt with and nearly 20,000 suspects arrested.

Online sales of consumer goods in China shot up by 26.2 percent to 5.16 trillion yuan (around $750 billion) in 2016, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.