What has 'Taobao Culture' brought us?

A few days ago, Hangzhou police, in collaboration with Taobao, cracked China's first "malicious poor evaluators" case, arresting seven "poor evaluators". Police said the crackdown will continue. As a representative website of e-commerce and Asia-Pacific's largest online retailing trade circle, Taobao tends to "establish rules" for e-commerce with its every move.

Taobao website covers most of the online shopping crowd in China, which in turn become the creators and participants of its derivative cultures. From trifle matters such as the popularity of "Taobao style" that address all people with "dear", to significant events such as the popularity of third-party payment systems and the establishment of an credit rating system with customer evaluation as the core, Taobao has revealed a gorgeous picture of the consumer society, and to some extent, it has contributed to the growth of the consumer society. Of course, like all other social networking sites, it too, has cultivated a new network community and changed the traditional ways of communication.

The credit evaluation system of Taobao is worth highlighting. The system has fixed the basic order and shaped the mainstream culture of Taobao in a straightforward way by determining the credit ratings of the sellers and directly affecting their profits, reputation, and brand on the basis of "good", "moderate", and "poor" evaluations (as well as more detailed scoring) from the buyers. Such credit evaluation system is hard to be implemented in the traditional markets but has gained a simple silhouette in the area of e-commerce.

A basic principle in the market economy is that one should create benefits for others in order to gain benefits of their own. The establishment of such principle depends on the maturity of the credit system. Taobao treasures its "evaluation culture" and has launched internal right-safeguarding campaigns against dishonesty on the sellers' side such as driving up their reputation as well as on the buyers' side such as malicious poor evaluation. Before the public security organs intervened, Taobao had already opened up green channels for reporting malicious bidding on the matter of "malicious poor evaluation". The establishment and maintenance of the "evaluation culture" brings inspirations in the traditional market. Even medical reform and education reform can borrow ideas from its spirit.

Real world laws also apply to virtual world crimes, but judicial and law enforcement agencies face a test of using existing laws to effectively tackle virtual world crimes. Such exploration needs specific cases to provide steps and pivots, so an orderly online market will be gradually established, and laws will be more useful in regulating the virtual world. As a by-product of the e-commerce culture, the first online "malicious poor evaluators" case will help bring online market behavior further into China's legal framework.