The General Administration of Customs in The People’s Republic of China is continuing with its major crackdown on counterfeit goods being smuggled both in and out of the country and from province to province.

 

This has been particular evident in the last few months alone, where it has made multiple ‘goods seizures’ at borders all around the country – in line with the central Beijing instruction to ramp up seizures of fake goods and prosecute the perpetrators.

 

AUGUST: THE MONTH OF THE SMUGGLER IN CHINA?

As a result, the last few months appear to have been busier than usual, with large quantities of confiscated goods, including e-cigarettes, cigarettes, jewellery, sunglasses, watches, handbags, shoes, T-shirts and audio devices, fashion clothing and other items.

 

The following examples below are confirmed seizure reports by Chinese Customs on various borders, providing an accurate to the types of goods that counterfeiters and/or smugglers are trying pass off as leading western brands:

 

AUGUST 3 2017: Xiamen Customs seized 50,000 garments, which were confirmed by the trademark owners to be infringing on their intellectual property rights (IPR). This was the biggest seizure of counterfeit garments in Xiamen this year comprising fake goods masquerading as Adidas, Tommy Hilfiger and Hurley.

 

AUGUST 8: Gongbei Customs reported it had seized two cases containing 1,280 pieces of counterfeit handbags, shoes, T-shirts and audio devices – all confirmed as infringing on famous international branded property rights.

 

AUGUST 16: Guangzhou Customs and Panyu Customs House discovered an export shipment declared as ‘18K gold-inlaid jewelry’, which included 60 necklaces and bracelets infringing the intellectual property trademark ‘BVLGARI’. This represented the first intellectual property rights (IPR) infringement in jewellery using foreign-supplied materials in the Guangzhou Customs region.

 

AUGUST 21: Gongbei Customs announced that on August 8 it seized the largest smuggled haul of e-cigarette liquid nationwide of around 600 tons – said to be worth around Y300m ($30m).

 

AUGUST 22: Nanning Customs District’s Fangcheng Customs destroyed 120m pieces of smuggled cigarettes in a refuse disposal plant.

 

AUGUST 25: Guangzhou Customs announced that Baiyun Airport Customs seized a batch of sunglasses for export, falsely declared as dresses and cell phone. These were printed with trademarks (some spelt incorrectly) such as ‘Prada’, ‘Channel’, ‘Fendi’ and ‘MIU MIU’. On inspection, a total of 7,460 pairs were identified as counterfeit by the trademark owners.

 

OTHER CHINA CUSTOMS SEIZURES…

Besides these examples, there were also several others, including last July’s seizure of two batches of counterfeit sunglasses at Zhoushan port (in north-eastern Zhejiang Province comprising 17,200 pairs of sunglasses branded as “Gucci’, ‘LV’, ‘Dior’ and ‘NIKE’. These counterfeit items were retained by customs for examination by the intellectual brand owners.

 

Yet another undated seizure this year included seizure of goods related to a Xiamen-based company which claimed it was exporting men’s pants. However, customs officers found the goods to be ‘disorderly packed’, including 11,735 short pants and 18,208 T-shirts marked Adidas, plus 6,064 short pants marked Tommy Hilfiger (also fake) and several other examples.

 

August 2017 also saw Shenzhen Customs arrest five smuggling teams after they seized more than 2,000 wristwatches branded as both Longines and Omega.

 

ALL OF THE FAKE ITEMS ABOVE SHOWN TOGETHER WITH OTHERS BELOW: