Shein’s imbroglio over the sale of banned weapons and so-called “childlike sex dolls” in France isn’t showing signs of dying down any time soon.
Next Friday, the country’s government will ask a Paris judge to suspend the e-tail leviathan’s French marketplace for three months, a finance ministry official said Tuesday. The hearing, which was initiated as part of an accelerated judicial procedure intended to prioritize proceedings, will include lawyers for both Shein and Infinited Styles Services Co., the Dublin-based company that operates its European websites and apps.
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The government has also summoned the internet service providers Bouygues Telecom, Free, Orange and SFR to the hearing to request that they block Shein’s website.
The hearing was originally scheduled for Wednesday before being postponed to Dec. 5, exactly a month after France’s crackdown on the platform took a marked turn from previous debates over “eco-taxes” on fast fashion that all but named Shein as a target.
“We know how powerful Shein is from a technical standpoint, and even, I would say, in terms of its use of artificial intelligence for production, so we can assume that it has the technical, technological and financial means to carry out these checks,” Reuters quoted an unnamed finance ministry official as saying during a press briefing. “The fact is that it does not do so.”
Shein did not respond to a request for comment.
French authorities, under the direction of Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, had initially moved to suspend the Chinese-founded firm’s website when the discovery of the dolls and weapons—along with the opening of Shein’s first permanent physical outpost in BHV Marais in Paris—blew up in the news earlier this month, but eased off after Shein removed the illicit items from its platform.
The Singapore-headquartered retailer also said that it had suspended listings from third-party vendors on the country’s marketplace to allow a “comprehensive review to ensure full adherence to French law and the highest standards of consumer protection.”
Customs officials were, however, ordered on the following day to inspect every online shipment the company had dispatched to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Roissy-en-France over the previous 24 hours, a feat that amounted to checking some 200,000 packages.
The operation revealed that eight out of every 10 products shipped by Shein didn’t comply with regulations, the Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control, or DGCCRF, said in a statement. The contraband included unauthorized cosmetics, dangerous toys and faulty household appliances.
This week, Shein said that it was temporarily delisting its entire adult products category while it introduced new “enhanced” control measures, including strengthening its keyword blacklist to further prevent the dodging of product listing restrictions and the creation of a cross-department marketplace integrity task force to review findings from Shein’s ongoing internal audit, recommend corrective measures and coordinate with regulators and other stakeholders.
“The fight against child exploitation is non-negotiable for Shein. These were marketplace listings from third-party sellers, but I take this personally,” Donald Tang, Shein’s executive chairman, said in a statement. “Trust is our foundation, and we will not allow anything that violates it. Every related product has been removed. We are tracing the source and will take swift, decisive action against those responsible. We will also review our internal processes thoroughly and strengthen our safeguards to protect our customers and the integrity of our marketplace.”
Paris prosecutors have also initiated investigations into AliExpress and Joom for selling childlike sex dolls and Amazon, Temu and Wish for distributing pornographic content without effective filtering measures for minors, a DGCCRF spokesperson said.
“During an hour of package inspections at Roissy, we observed numerous non-conformities: counterfeits, fake CE markings, potentially dangerous items,” Romain Eskenazi, an elected member of the National Assembly for Val-d’Oise’s 7th constituency, wrote on social media. “These practices endanger consumers and create unfair competition for our merchants.”
Shein must “respect our rules,” he added. “Our message is simple: compliance with the law is not optional. Protecting the French and ensuring fair trade is our responsibility.”
All of this comes as a coalition comprising thousands of French retailers is filing a class-action lawsuit against Shein for what it describes as unfair competition. The 12 federations and 100 large brands are demanding up to 3 billion euros, the equivalent of $3.5 billion, in economic compensation from the company for using “misleading commercial practices” and “breaches of product conformity and safety obligations” to steal away customers.
Shutting down Shein, the retailers said, would show that France “will not tolerate commercial platforms thriving in France by circumventing laws, endangering minors, consumers and the environment.”
“Simple regulation is not enough: we cannot indefinitely ‘monitor’ a platform when the signals are already strong and the potential victims numerous,” Guy Gras, president of Conseil du Commerce de France, said in a statement. “Strong, immediate action is needed without delay. Close all access to the Shein platform.”
The controversy isn’t being contained to France, either. Over in the United States, a bipartisan group of lawmakers from the House of Representatives wrote to Shein last week expressing concern that it may have facilitated the sale of “sex dolls with a childlike appearance” to American customers and requesting answers from its enigmatic founder and CEO Xu Yangtian, who is also known as Chris Xu or Sky Xu.
“While we commend reports that Shein imposed a ban on the sale of all sex dolls and has taken steps to temporarily suspend all sales by third-party vendors on its marketplace in France, it is unacceptable that these products were ever allowed to be sold on Shein’s website,” they wrote. “We are also concerned as to the possibility that these childlike sex dolls were available for sale in the U.S., encouraging pedophilia and the sexual exploitation of children.”
