The battle against Chinese counterfeit products has been complicated by the fact that they are now better than the real thing, millionaire businessman Jack Ma has said. 

Mr Ma, who founded Chinese online retailer Alibaba, said that counterfeiters had learnt tricks of the trade and adapted their business models accordingly. 

"It's not the fake products that destroy them, it's the new business models. The problem is that fake products today, they make better quality, better prices than the real products, the real names." 

Mr Ma's Alibaba Group has been criticised for the proliferation of cheap knock-off products on offer on the site, and his outlandish claims can be seen as a defence against such criticism. 

Alibaba, which handles more business than Amazon and Ebay combined, was suspended from the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition in May.