Travel website accused of plagiarism, fake accounts

Chinese travel website Mafengwo denied that it posted fake reviews on its site after a social media report accused it of copying review content from competitors and fabricating as much as 85 percent of the reviews on its platform.

The company said in a statement on its Sina Weibo account on Monday that reviews of restaurants and eateries made up less than 3 percent of the user-generated content on the Mafengwo platform, which includes travel itineraries, diary entries and photo sharing.

"The number of accounts suspected of false reviews accounted for a very small proportion of overall users, and Mafengwo has removed such accounts. The number of fake users mentioned in the media report is seriously inconsistent with facts and third-party statistics," the company said.