When police raided San Cheng’s Beijing apartment late at night and accused him of illegally buying weapons, he was sure it was a mess.
It’s true that he had bought dozens of toy guns on the Alibaba group’s trade website Taobao, as props for his company, which designs shooting games for smartphones. But the seemingly harmless replicas were so cheap and easy to buy, according to Cheng, that he thought owning them couldn’t be a crime.
Was wrong. Cheng, 47, a Taiwanese-American game designer, ended up spending three years in detention and in prison. There, he claims that he met about 20 other men who had also been arrested in a police raid against the purchase of replica weapons over the internet.
China has some of the toughest gun laws in the world, including vague definitions of what can be considered an illegal weapon. But Cheng’s experience shows how the rules can be extremely broad, punishing people for buying toy guns or replicas easily found online.
“They are the biggest digital commerce platform in China,” says the designer, referring to Taobao, in an interview speaking from New Jersey, where he is recovering after being released from a Chinese prison last year. “People just don’t realize they’re illegal, because if you go to Taobao and look for ‘toy weapons’ you’ll get a lot of recommendations.”
Chinese authorities have mainly been prosecuting buyers of these items and, to a lesser extent, sellers, according to a search of a national online database of court rulings. But the purchasing platforms on which these sales take place are rarely targeted, and it is unclear how much legal liability companies like Alibaba have in such situations.
Under Taobao’s terms of service, Alibaba notifies customers that they are buying from third-party merchants, which means the company cannot guarantee that all products are safe, high quality and legal. Alibaba declined to comment.
Cheng and other activists urged authorities to increase pressure on online commerce sites rather than arrest ill-informed shoppers.
Strong gun control in China makes fatal shootings rare, which is why many citizens support these laws. But there has been a growing debate about the legal definition of a firearm.
Experts say the country’s regulations — which prohibit the purchase, sale or possession of weapons above a very low power limit — are vague and difficult for laymen, but even judges, to understand. The result, critics say, is that unsuspecting buyers of compressed air and spring-powered toys are turned into criminals.
China’s Gun Control Act of 1996 states that to be legally classified as such an artifact must be capable of killing a person or rendering them unconscious. But in 2010 the Ministry of Public Security imposed much stricter rules that defined many toys as illegal weapons. According to them, a toy that fires a projectile with enough force to rip a sheet of newspaper — even though it is far from lethal — could be considered a weapon, lawyers said.
In a study published in 2019, researchers at China Public Security University found that almost an entire random sample of 229 replicas purchased online would be classified as illegal under the 2010 rules.
“These toys are openly sold in Hong Kong, but on the mainland they are treated as weapons and ammunition,” says Wang Jinzhong, whose son was sentenced to life in northern Hebei province in 2016 for owning 16 replicas that the police found it illegal.
“Frankly, there are many things more dangerous than these toys.” Wang petitioned the judges and authorities that his son, Wang Yinpeng, 37, be released. “This is a human rights disaster for China.”
Chinese regulators have demanded over the years that Alibaba be more proactive in preventing various types of illegal products from being sold in its digital bazaars. In 2015, the country’s market watchdog accused the company of turning a blind eye to sales of counterfeit alcohol and cigarettes, fake branded handbags and “items that endanger public safety,” such as certain knives. Alibaba called the regulator’s findings of faults and filed a complaint.
When it comes to objects that could be considered illegal firearms, Taobao warns customers of the risks, albeit somewhat inconsistently. Searching for “gun replica” on the platform yields no results — just a warning message about China’s gun laws. But by tweaking the search term (for example, to “toy gun replica”) Taobao displays many replica handguns and rifles.
Zhou Yuzhong, a south China lawyer who specializes in defending people accused of buying illicit weapons, said the main problem is that the definition of a weapon is so technical in China that special equipment is needed to judge whether a product is illegal.
“It’s very difficult for sellers and consumers to immediately see if an object that looks like a weapon goes over the edge,” he says. This makes it just as difficult for Taobao and other e-commerce sites to police illegal weapons offers as it is for buyers to avoid buying them.
Some Chinese law enforcement agencies and consumer associations offer simple advice to anyone thinking about buying toy guns online: just don’t buy it.
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