A MAN WAS RECENTLY found guilty of running a website that helped online shops falsify the number of transactions they made in order to fool people into believing they were trusted by consumers. That is the first time someone has been punished for this kind of crime in China. Beijing News comments:

The man was found guilty of "illegal trading", as well as "violating the personal information of citizens".

Such deeds should be punished because they are a type of fraud and ruin the normal order of online retail. With the help of such people, the shops that provide bad products and services cannot be eliminated from the market, due to a lack of customers.

Worse, a complete interest chain has already been formed. Data show that there were at least 680 enterprises conducting such activities in 2014, making an estimated revenue of more than 200 billion yuan ($29.2 billion) that year.

However, there has been hardly any judicial penalty for those falsifying the data. Many online trading platforms simply correct the data if their falsehoods are uncovered.

Last December, when online trading platform Alibaba sued shatui.com for falsifying its data, it was found that the latter had already been punished by a local government for the same misdeed, and the penalty it received was just a fine of about 100,000 yuan.

That is why the latest ruling is significant, as it sets a precedent of judicial punishment for those professionally falsifying data on online retailers' transactions.

This will in turn boost the development of e-commerce, which is based on trust.