While Western police and customs services continue to focus on organised networks of counterfeiters, a new business model has emerged among Chinese fake luxury goods: pirate workshops selling directly to consumers, with no contact with the informal economy that underpins the sector. They are proving difficult to detect.
A growing trend is making life much harder for customs agents and specialist anti-counterfeiting investigators. Over recent months, wildcat operators who work outside centralised networks or major mafia-style syndicates have sprung up in several locations in China. These workshops produce
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