China's cross-border e-commerce sellers have been experiencing a tortuous period. Amazon has launched a series of crackdowns on some of its top sellers from China, ranging from warnings to outright suspensions.  

The most common reason for this is  "click farming", which Amazon considers to be paid-for-reviews. A number of top sellers have been blocked since June. some of the sellers in the black list have sales worth more than $1 billion on Amazon, which are known in the industry as "blockbusters."  

Shenzhen Youkeshu Technology Co, which is controlled by listed company Tiza Information, was reported earlier this month that about 340 stores had been closed by Amazon and 130 million yuan ($20 million) in funds had been frozen.  

However, that's just the tip of the iceberg. The main brand Mpow of Patozon was banned in the end of April this year, which is the earliest shock to the whole industry due to Amazon’s closure. Aukey also was banned on May 9. Another case is that Zebao Technology, super seller in ShenZhen, was also hit in the same period.

With some big sellers fined to close shop, small and medium-sized seller will reasonably feel anxious. There even fly some rumors that the ban could be a product of the trade war between China and the United States, as Chinese cross-border e-commerce companies already rank top on Amazon in terms of its size and influence.  

Respondents also said: "Although Amazon has a ban on paid reviews, but this phenomenon also exists among US sellers, but I have never heard of them being blocked like Chinese sellers.  The blacklist shows that the crackdown is targeting top Chinese brands in each category!"  

Is China's cross-border sellers the victim of Sino-US trade war?  

In the industry, some people compare click farming to fertilizer that help crops to grow faster.

In addition to click farming, paid reviews, another very dangerous violation is the infringement of goods.  For example,  toy "anti-rodent pioneer" has been popular for some time in overseas market.  Some merchants blindly select products according to their sales volume. However, it infringes the intellectual property right of Foxmind, and the US court got into investigation and froze the accounts of dozens of merchants.  

In 2021, there are still a lot of new cross-border merchants hoping to gain profits . The European and American countries are gradually recovering, but the structure of supply source is quietly reversing. Some experts believe that cross-border e-commerce is more difficult and the competition is more fierce this year.  How to stand out from the increasingly fierce competition and a large number of businesses, click farming seems to be  the only choice.