E- commerce giant urges corruption crackdown

The chairman of Chinese e- commerce company JD. com Inc has called for a tighter crackdown on corruption in business activities, according to an article posted in the newspaper under the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China.

When Liu Qiangdong, founder of JD, started a restaurant business in college, it failed because of corrupt staff members including cooks and purchase managers, he wrote in the article.

“That experience made me very sad. The corruption disrupted the core values of the company, as well as the dream we shared,” Liu noted.

In recent years, China’s anticorruption campaign helped improve the business environment and established healthier, sustainable relations between offi cials and businessmen, according to the article.

For example, JD signed an agreement on the logistics business with Northwest China’s Shaanxi Province in May, and the high effi ciency as well as the innovative sprit of local offi cials impressed the Internet company.

JD has worked with 13 provinces in China as of the end of June, and a sound relationship between the business and local authorities has been established in these cases.

In the past fi ve years, a high- profi le anti- corruption campaign has led to the downfall of a number of high- level offi cials, known as “tigers” and lower- level “fl ies” who serve at the grass- roots level. The anti- graft campaign has been extended into other sectors such as fi nance and the military.

Liu also noted in the article that as a technology company, JD. com Inc will use technologies such as its big data platform in fi ghting corruption.

Liu is ranked as the fi fth richest man in China’s tech industry by Forbes, with a total valuation of $ 7.4 billion, according to the website of the US fi nancial news outlet.