San Cheng was sure it was a mistake when the police raided his apartment in Beijing and accused him of illegally buying guns.
He had bought many toy guns on the Taobao shopping site as props for his business. Mr. Cheng thought that owning replicas could not be a crime.
He was wrong. Mr. Cheng spent three years in jail and was released after a year. He said he met 20 other men who had also been arrested in a police sweep against buying replica guns online.
China has some of the toughest weapons laws in the world. Mr. Cheng shows how much the rules can be if you buy a toy or replica gun online.
Mr. Cheng, who was released from a Chinese prison last year, said in an interview that he was the biggest digital retailing platform in China. If you search for toy guns on Taobao, you will get a lot of recommendations.
The Chinese authorities have mostly prosecuted the buyers of such items, according to a search of an online nationwide database of court judgments. The online shopping platforms where these sales take place have rarely been targeted, and it's not clear how much legal responsibility companies like Alibaba have in such situations.
The company cannot guarantee that every product is safe, high-quality and legal because it warns shoppers that they are buying from third-party merchants. The company declined to comment.
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Mr. Cheng designed a video game. He never imagined that buying toy guns on the site would be illegal.
Mr. Cheng and others have urged the authorities to put more pressure on China's online shopping sites.
China has strong gun controls that make fatal shootings rare, and many citizens support the laws to keep it that way. There is a debate over the legal definition of a firearm. China's regulations banning buying, selling or owning weapons above a very low threshold of force are hard for lay people to understand. Critics say that the result is that people who buy compressed-air and spring-powered toys are turned into criminals.
To be classified as a gun in China, a weapon has to be able to kill someone or knock someone unconscious. In 2010 the Chinese Ministry of Public Security imposed strict rules that defined many toys as illegal guns. A toy gun that shoots a projectile with enough force to tear a sheet of newspaper can be considered a gun, according to lawyers.
A study published in the year of 2019: investigators from China's Public Security University found that nearly all of a random sample of 229 replica guns bought online would be classified as illegal under the 2010 rules.
In Hong Kong, toy guns are openly sold, but in the mainland they are treated as weapons and not allowed to be sold.
Mr. Wang said that there are many things more dangerous than toys. This is a human rights disaster for China.
Over the years, regulators in China have demanded that Alibaba be more proactive about stopping illegal goods from being sold on its digital bazaars. In 2015, the country's market watchdog accused the company of turning a blind eye to the sale of fake alcohol and cigarettes, and other items that endanger public safety. The company filed a complaint after they called the findingsflawed.
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Two people are at home in China. Wang Yinpeng is serving a life sentence for buying, collecting and trading toy guns.
Taobao warns customers about the risks when it comes to objects that might be considered illegal firearms. There is only a warning message about China's gun laws when searching for "replica gun" on the platform. If you change the search term to, say, "gun toy replica", you can see a lot of replica handguns and rifles.
Zhou Yuzhong, a lawyer in southern China who specializes in defending people accused of buying illegal guns, said that the main problem was that the definition of a gun in China is so technical that it's hard to determine if a product is illegal.
Mr. Zhou said it was hard for sellers and consumers to see if a gunlike object crosses the threshold. It's difficult for e-commerce sites to police listings for illegal guns because shoppers don't want to buy them.
The Chinese police and consumer associations have offered simple advice for people who are considering buying toy guns online.
The Taiwanese American game developer, Mr. Cheng, said that the other inmates and prisoners he met had also bought their replicas on the internet. Mr. Cheng said that most of the dads bought them for their kids.
Mr. Cheng said that he bought his guns in 2016 to use them as models for shooting games. Paula Friedman befriended Mr. Cheng and his wife when they were living in the United States.
Ms. Friedman said that she did not know if Mr. Cheng had any interest in guns. That was not a part of their lives.
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There are photographs of Wang Yinpeng. His parents are trying to get him out of prison.
Mr. Cheng was confident that he would be freed when the judge sentenced him. The court accepted the police accusations that Mr. Cheng was a gun nut and that he had exaggerated the threat of his toy guns. He said he had never fired them.
In China, lawyers, judges and even members of the legislature have pushed back against the country's gun laws for years, arguing that they were leading to cases of unjust imprisonment.
Guidance was issued by China's highest court and prosecution office in order to ease the problem of suspected illegal guns.
The lawyer said that the judgments in gun cases have not been as rigid as before. Many defendants are given suspended sentences because they will not go to prison unless they reoffend, according to court records.
The authorities launched a campaign in May to crack down on guns and replicas. If they are found guilty, they must live with the stigma of a criminal record.
Mo said he had been unsuccessful in his attempt to have his son's conviction overturned. His son bought six toy guns when he was a teenager.
Mr. Mo said that the man wanted to find a job but couldn't. Nobody will hire him if they see he has a gun possession conviction.
The research was contributed by Liu Yi.
