IT News on October 15th: According to Leifeng Network, Zuo Qi, the purchasing and sales manager of JD.com, has been sued by Douyin E-commerce for spreading rumors and slandering other platforms during the 618 promotional period. Currently, the Haidian District People's Court in Beijing has officially filed the case.
Upon review, from May 29th to 31st, 2026, a screenshot of a WeChat post by Zuo Qi, a purchasing and sales manager at JD.com, spread widely on social media. Numerous social media accounts posted claims that "JD.com employees revealed on their WeChat Moments how Douyin coerces merchants and the media to slander JD.com in exchange for traffic." The content was published at concentrated times on various social platforms, showed a high degree of homogenization, and the URLs contained a consistent pattern (IP), which are characteristic of bot accounts. After its publication, it was mistakenly believed by several media outlets, which then cited and reported on it.
Zuo Qi mentioned in her WeChat Moments that on the eve of the 618 shopping festival, many merchants and media outlets received demands from a certain platform to publicly criticize JD.com. This platform provided support for the traffic of negative news about JD.com and, based on just one media report, pushed those negative stories to its own hot lists. The accusations were accompanied by a screenshot containing a link to Jutoutiao (a Chinese news app), indicating that the so-called “certain platform” referred to Douyin E-commerce (TikTok's shopping service) and Jutoutiao.
It is reported that accusations such as "using traffic to support negative reports about JD.com" are purely fabricated. The link in Zuo Qi's social media post corresponds to an industry supervision report by an official media outlet, titled "Well-known E-commerce Platform Embroiled in Price Discrepancy Scandal: The Same Product Can Have a Price Difference of Over a Thousand Yuan; Market Supervision Department Calls for Rectification of Cutthroat Competition." This report has never made it onto the hot list of Toutiao.
The report indicates that during major promotional periods, JD.com requires merchants on its platform to offer the “lowest price across the internet.” The cost of these price reductions is mainly borne by the merchants, while JD.com ensures its own profits through “gross profit protection” clauses. In order to compete, JD.com sometimes deliberately sets very low prices for products that are not available on its platform, creating a situation where the same product can have a price difference of thousands of yuan compared to other platforms. “In essence, they use fake prices to disrupt merchants’ sales on other platforms.”
The report suggests that the aforementioned behavior violates the provisions of the 'Internet Platform Price Behavior Rules' which state that 'platforms shall not force or indirectly force operators within the platform to reduce prices,' and it also contradicts the spirit of comprehensive regulation against 'involution-style' competition by regulatory authorities.
According to inquiries from the IT community, fabricating and spreading false information about competitors that damages their business reputation may constitute an infringement of the right to reputation or commercial slander, and one may be liable for civil liabilities such as compensation for damages and an apology. In cases where significant losses are incurred or there are other serious circumstances, it may even constitute the crime of damaging business reputation or product reputation, leading to criminal liabilities such as fixed-term imprisonment, criminal detention, and fines.
