China establishes e-commerce union to monitor, share quality information

An e-commerce union has been established to share product quality information and identify blacklisted businesses, a senior official with the quality watchdog said Thursday.

Zhang Qinrong, deputy head of China's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ), said the union will connect e-commerce enterprises and rid the market of those that are dishonest or illegal.

The e-commerce industry is booming in China, with online retail turnover hitting 1.8 trillion yuan (293.89 billion US dollars) in the first three quarters of 2014, up 49.9 percent from a year ago.

Meanwhile, complaints over counterfeit or poor quality products needed to be addressed by unified supervision.

Zhang said the AQSIQ has set up a public service platform for sharing information and is planning to build a database to select and analyze information.