Photo: CFP
Chinese netizens have denounced the inappropriate pictures posted by children’s underwear online stores in their advertisement, saying that this is child pornography.
The Global Times found on Sunday that three stores denounced by netizens in their posts have pulled off the relevant advertising pictures.
According to the online news site, gmw.cn on Friday, a staff member from one of the exposed online stores on Taobao, an e-commerce platform in China, said that they were “making improvements on this problem and photos like this will not be posted again.”
“We have noticed a similar situation and those stores involved will be punished accordingly,” a Taobao customer service representative said on Thursday without revealing more specific details about the penalty.
According to the pictures exposed by some netizens, the children were shown in sensual poses such as “looking back with lips open” and imitating adults with inappropriate postures. This has enraged most people.
Some netizens think that the sexually suggestive advertisement was not intentionally chosen by store owners. “They just don’t know that photos like these might be taken by pedophiles for their advantage,” explained one netizen.
However, most of them believed that they should be held accountable for this. “I can’t imagine the consequences when pedophiles see photos like these,” said another concerned netizen.
A lawyer told gmw.cn on Friday that online sellers might face administrative penalties for child pornography for the inappropriate content.
Besides store owners, the parents of those models were also lashed by netizens who said that they should also be responsible in this issue.
An Xiang, a lawyer from Beijing believes that parents should also be punished as they are the legal guardians and somehow benefited from infringing on their own children’s rights.