Inside the Coordinated Smear Campaign That Used Fake Food-Delivery Uniforms to Attack Alibaba and JD.com

Taobao Shangou, also referred to in some reports as Taobao Instant Commerce, confirmed that Sichuan provincial police and Chengdu authorities had investigated and penalized those responsible for fabricating and spreading defamatory information .

JD.com: attacks beyond food delivery

JD.com said the smear campaign was broader than the altered uniform images that initially surfaced. The company stated the campaign also targeted its finance unit and its founder, Richard Liu Qiangdong. JD.com did not provide specific details about the false claims made against its finance operations or its founder, leaving the full scope of the disinformation effort partly unclear .

The inclusion of JD.com's founder as a target suggests an attempt to inflict reputational damage at both the operational and leadership levels—a pattern that goes beyond typical competitive jostling into personal territory.

Corporate responses and the regulatory backdrop

Both Alibaba and JD.com publicly thanked Chengdu police for "combating online rumours" and "maintaining a clean and healthy online environment" . The companies' statements reflect the growing reliance of Chinese tech firms on public security organs to police online information that affects their businesses.

The smear campaign crackdown did not happen in isolation. Only days earlier, the Beijing Municipal Administration for Market Regulation had summoned five major platforms—Alibaba's Taobao and Tmall, JD.com, PDD Holdings (Pinduoduo), ByteDance's Douyin, and Xiaohongshu—over what officials described as false advertising and problematic promotional practices during the 618 festival . The regulator ordered all five platforms to immediately rectify their 618 promotions, citing issues including false claims, non-transparent business rules, and failure to properly disclose seller information .

Taken together, the back-to-back enforcement actions—market regulation summons and a police crackdown on a hired smear operation—highlight Beijing's intensifying scrutiny of competitive conduct in e-commerce. The simultaneous pressure on both promotional practices (through regulators) and covert disinformation campaigns (through police) signals an unusually comprehensive push to police the digital marketplace.

China's wider crackdown on online disinformation

The dismantling of the Alibaba–JD.com smear campaign fits into a larger pattern of Chinese authorities targeting organized disinformation. Beijing has run sustained campaigns against online rumors in recent years. A yearlong crackdown launched in 2024 resulted in over 27,000 cases handled and more than 1.5 million pieces of online disinformation removed as of September 2024, according to the Ministry of Public Security . Earlier enforcement in 2023 shut down 34,000 online accounts for rumor-mongering, with more than 6,300 people punished .

What made the Sichuan case distinctive was its connection to commercial competition. While previous campaigns focused heavily on politically destabilizing rumors, pandemic misinformation, and AI-generated hoaxes, this operation involved a hired media agency producing targeted corporate disinformation—a signal that authorities are broadening their definition of "online ecosystem" threats to include commercial sabotage .

Open questions

The largest unanswered question is which company hired Chengdu Xiaoben Culture Media to conduct the smear campaign. Neither the police statement nor the SCMP report identified the commissioning party. Without that disclosure, it remains unclear whether this was a case of direct competitor warfare, a third-party acting on a grudge, or a more complex arrangement. Market regulation authorities now hold the evidence—and whether they publicly name the hiring company will be a significant test of the transparency Beijing is willing to enforce in commercial disinformation cases .