A Chinese mainland spokeswoman on Wednesday said Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) attempts to decouple with the mainland after online marketplace Taobao Taiwan was forced to close.

Calling this move as "political manipulation," Zhu Fenglian, spokesperson for the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office, said the DPP authority is hindering economic and trade cooperation between the mainland and the island and attempting to economically decouple with the mainland.

Taobao Taiwan, launched on the island in late October last year, has brought real benefits to local consumers. Now it was forced to shut down, the move only harms local residents' interests, Zhu told reporters.

Last month, the company officially announced that it would stop taking new orders around noon on October 15 before officially going offline on December 31 after "prudent evaluations."

Taobao Taiwan is registered as a foreign company through its operator - UK-registered Claddagh Venture Investment - but Taiwanese authorities deemed that it was in effect controlled by mainland's e-commerce giant Alibaba.

In August, the island's Investment Commission fined Claddagh 410,000 New Taiwan dollars (around 14,322.88 U.S. dollars) for violating local law governing investments from the mainland and gave it six months to "rectify" the situation or withdraw its investment.