China Cracks Down Internet Firearms Transaction

The rise of ecommerce in China has touched almost every sector of the economy – including an increasingly popular black market for DIY firearms.

For less than $100 one can buy the parts, tools and instructions to make a shotgun. There have been several arrests this year with police swooping on gangs of online gunrunners.

Most recently, two men from Shanxi province were arrested last month for having a small arsenal of guns, firearms parts and ammunition they had bought online on Taobao, the popular Chinese ecommerce website owned by Alibaba, which listed in New York in September in the largest-ever initial public offering and which yesterday released its debut set of results as a listed company.
Police said the suspects also used QQ, an online chat app owned by Tencent, another Chinese internet giant, to find clients and give online tutorials.

online trading in illegal firearms has soared in the past three years, according to Ma Ding, dean of the Institute of Network Security at the People’s Public Security University of China, which trains elite police officers. “The internet has provided a more convenient channel through which buyers and sellers far away can reach each other,” she said. “There is now easier access to the materials and components.”

However, Ms Ma added the quality of the weapons sold online was generally low. In one recent case, a car mechanic named Zhou was arrested in Jiangsu province for modifying air rifles to shoot bullets. He apparently had a fondness for hunting birds and police described his contraption as capable of “shooting a hole in a beer bottle 6m away”.

But some online arms dealers are of a larger scale. In June, a man in Dezhou in Shandong province was arrested for running an online shop on Taobao wher he sold an estimated 130 rifles as well as gun parts to buyers in 22 provinces worth more than Rmb40,000. He also published an online video tutorial on how to assemble guns.

Alibaba is particularly exposed because virtually all small online sellers in China use Taobao. While Alibaba has strict policies prohibiting weapons sales, it has had problems policing sellers of everything from fake goods to uranium and other materials that can be used to make nuclear bombs.

“Taobao Marketplace is an open, user-generated content platform,” the company said in a statement, “and has stringent product listing policies in place prohibiting the listing of any firearms or weapons; the platform will co-operate with law enforcement authorities to remove problematic product listings promptly.”

In most cases, traders have hidden by selling innocuous sounding parts, which can then be assembled into finished guns. In the Shandong case, “Huo” ran a Taobao shop called Chengxin Qidong, or “Honesty Pneumatic components”.

“Internet gun traders may be quite discreet, as they divide their shipments and there is nothing suspicious of the parts themselves” said Ms Ma.

However, she said, police units have begun monitoring forums and online stores advertising certain types of tubing and other parts that can be used in assembling firearms. “The cases are too difficult to crack,” she said. (www.chinainout.com)