Alibaba slams FT report on alleged PLA ties as ‘completely false’, ‘malicious’

Alibaba Group Holding on Saturday denied a report by The Financial Times about the company’s alleged support for China’s military in operations against the United States.

“The assertions and innuendos in the article are completely false,” an Alibaba representative said. “We question the motivation behind the anonymous leak, which the FT admits that they cannot verify.”

The Alibaba representative called the article a “malicious PR operation” that appears to “undermine President Trump’s recent trade deal with China”.

Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

The report – published early Saturday morning, Hong Kong time – cited a White House memo that claimed Alibaba provided the Chinese government and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) with access to customer data, including internet protocol addresses, Wi-fi information, payment records and artificial intelligence services.

Alibaba employees, according to the report, also transferred knowledge about “zero-day” vulnerabilities to the PLA.