Counterfeit Kings

[Sabra]

Shenzhen Longgang district police recently caught a criminal ring running two fake online Huawei stores. 26 suspects were arrested this past Saturday in a police raid in Hubei. Police found that that criminals had made more than 20 million Yuan from sales on the fake sites.

On October 27, the Longgang Public Security Bureau received a report from Huawei that a company had been creating fake versions of its website to sell Huawei phones online. When customers ordered from the fake sites, they either received a shoddy fake or nothing at all. In the same period, local police in Bantian, a neighborhood in Longgang, received a number of reports regarding the purchase of fake cell phones.

Customers on the fake site were tricked because its similar layout to Huawei’s real site. They would call the number on the site and speak to a “Huawei representative,” who would note the model they wanted and help process their payment.

Customers who ordered 3,000 Yuan Huawei phones received phones worth about 300 Yuan. Most people received a package with a phone that was not a Huawei phone, but a shoddy black market product. A number of consumers received nothing after paying for their phone.

The gang created two fake versions of Huawei’s official website and purchased ad-space to get them at the top of the search results page. A number of customers clicked on the site because it was the first option in the results, thinking it was the real thing.

On Saturday, a task force arrested 26 suspects in Zhijiang, Hubei and escorted them back to Shenzhen. A large police squadron escorted them back, with two suspects per policeman. All together, they took up a whole train carriage on the way back.

Source: thepaper.cn


广东警方端掉两个假“华为商城”，用1节高铁车厢押回诈骗犯

广州日报

2015-11-30 12:12

车厢内嫌疑人均带有黑色头套，身上贴有号码，双手反铐。 本文图片均来自网络

日前，深圳龙岗警方经过一个多月的循迹追查，辗转湖北、深圳两地，在湖北警方的配合下，接连打掉了两个假冒华为商城网站进行网络电信诈骗的特大犯罪团伙，抓获35名犯罪嫌疑人，涉案价值达2000多万元。

10月27日，龙岗公安分局宝岗派出所接华为公司报案称：其公司网站被人在互联网上制作假冒网站，以销售华为手机为幌子骗取消费者的钱财，并在消费者支付成功后拒绝发货，诈骗金额较大。与此同时，坂田派出所也陆续接到群众报案，称买

到假手机。

根据案情信息，专案组初步侦查了解到，受骗的消费者是通过搜索华为商城网站，然后与网站上留有的客服电话联系，选定手机型号支付购机款后，大部分人发现收到邮寄来的根本不是华为手机，而是劣质的山寨机和老人机，有的消费者甚至

付款后一直没有收到手机。

专案组发现两个派出所接到的警情分别是两个诈骗犯罪团伙作案，主要作案地点都在湖北省枝江市，而邮寄发货窝点在深圳福田区。专案组随即兵分三路，在深圳福田和湖北枝江两地成功抓捕。经审，分别以胡某，许某和李某为首的两个团伙

对其假冒华为官网进行诈骗的犯罪事实供认不讳。

两个诈骗犯罪团伙都是通过制作假冒的华为商城网站、华为官方网站，并使用技术手段，经搜索网站推广平台推送至搜索置顶，消费者习惯性点击排在第一位置的网站后，就会进入假冒网站。

团伙内部实行的是“股份制”公司化“经营”模式，如在胡某为首的团伙中，有3个股东，其中胡某与儿子、儿媳全家上阵，出资多是大股东，主要负责“售后服务”，嫌疑人孙某精通网络技术占“技术股”，负责制作假冒的网站、推广及日常维护和后台

管理。

一旦有消费者误入假冒的网站购买手机时，犯罪团伙中有专门的“客服”人员热情介绍手机性能，确认消费者已定购汇款后，再通知在深圳的发货嫌疑人邮寄劣质的山寨机和老人机。当消费者发现“货不对板”时或是没收到手机投诉时，有自称售

后服务的嫌疑人出面以种种理由进行敷衍。

消费者按正品手机3000元左右价格付款，收到的只是300元左右成本的劣质的山寨机和老人机。11月28日晚，专案组顺利地将在湖北枝江抓捕的26名犯罪嫌疑人押解回到深圳。每名嫌疑人均有两名民警押解，深圳龙岗警方动用了一整节车厢押

解此次抓获的嫌疑人。

深圳龙岗警方动用一整节高铁车厢押解犯罪嫌疑人，现场警力严阵以待。

 

[Sabra]

Chinese Viagra counterfeiters reimbursed for prostitutes, forced to test effectiveness of pills made with cornflour on themselves

Gangs in Hunan province, catering to growing demand for the pills across the mainland, were even reimbursed for hiring massage parlour prostitutes to help them refine the best mixture

PUBLISHED : Thursday, 03 December, 2015, 12:59pm
UPDATED : Thursday, 03 December, 2015, 4:22pm

Sidney Leng
[email protected]

Gangs in Hunan province by mixing real medication with cornflour to make fake Viagra pills. Photo: SCMP Pictures

Viagra counterfeiters in China have been making staff test the fake pills - produced by mixing cornflour with genuine medication - on themselves before offering it for sale, mainland media reports.

Counterfeit gangs, based in Hunan province, have initially been importing genuine Sildenafil – a Western medication for treating men’s erectile disfunction – from Henan province, then mixing it with cornflour to produce fake tablets, which they have then sold in bottles printed with fake labels and packaging, Sanxiang Metropolis newspaper reported on Wednesday.

To ensure the fake medication’s effectiveness and quality, some counterfeiters were told to force staff mixing in the corn flour who lived locally to test it on themselves when they were at home with their wives or girlfriends.

Migrant workers mixing the fake medication, living far from home, were reimbursed for hiring prostitutes in massage parlours to help them test out its effectiveness, the report said.

The machine they used for packaging. Photo: SCMP Pictures

“The staff were very happy to test the fake medication in the beginning, but later on they get annoyed because the pill-testing took up too much time, so they quit,” one member of a counterfeit pill-making gang, who has been caught by police, was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

“Therefore we changed three batches of mixers to adjust the proportion of the mixture of corn flour and Sildenafil from 1:1 to 1:1.5.

“At least we did human testing [on our drug]. We were serious.”

The report said the proportion of added cornflour makes a big difference because careless mixers could have ended up filling one pill entirely with cornflour and another entirely with Sildenafil, instead of mixing them evenly.

It would mean some men taking such pills would either experience a very strong reaction or no reaction at all.

Counterfeiting of Viagra has been on the increase on the mainland as growing sexual dysfunction – particularly among middle-aged people.

In March last year, police in the city of Shaoyang in the southwestern province of Hunan caught a counterfeiting gang that was producing more than 30 types of Viagra pills.

More than two million boxes of bottles of fake Viagra pills, which filled nine trucks, were confiscated by police.

 

[Sabra]

 

[NoLimit]

Gang of 20 busted in China for making and selling fake 20-yuan bank notes

The bills were printed, gilted, lacquered with a thin film, soaked in soy sauce, dried and worn out by a wooden scraper before they were introduced into the market as real money

PUBLISHED : Thursday, 07 January, 2016, 2:45pm
UPDATED : Thursday, 07 January, 2016, 2:53pm

Mandy Zuo
[email protected]

The counterfeit currency came in small denominations of just 20 yuan as people were less likely to check them. Photo: Qq.com

Police in eastern China have busted a gang of more than 20 people involved in the making and selling of counterfeit 20-yuan bank notes totalling more than 10 million yuan (HK$11.8 million).

The notes were printed, gilted, lacquered with a thin film, soaked in soy sauce, dried and worn out by a wooden scraper before they were introduced into the market as real money, Iqilu.com reported.

The suspects – 24 of whom were detained and two still on the run – chose to produce fake 20-yuan bills because people were unlikely to check such small denominations as carefully as they did 50-yuan and 100-yuan notes, one of them was quoted as saying.

They were uncovered when a package of the counterfeit currency was lost in delivery in Weifang in June, police in Shandong province said.

Police officers study the fake notes seized. Photo: Qq.com

The delivery firm opened the package after failing to locate its receipt, which is usually stuck on packages with the sender’s and receiver’s information, and found four bags of fake bank notes inside.

They were sent to a farmer in the city of Zhucheng, disguised as plastic mobile phone covers, according to police investigations.

The farmer confessed he had bought half-completed counterfeit bills from someone online and followed the instructions given to soak, dry and wear out before using them as real bank notes.

He stopped using the fake notes some time later and went into becoming a dealer of the counterfeit currency shortly after, buying each bill at 2.5 yuan and selling it for 2.7 yuan.

A real 20-yuan note versus an uncompleted fake one (below). Photo: Qq.comFollowing investigations, police arrested several others along the chain in other cities across Shandong, Hebei, Zhejiang, Shanghai, Henan, Fujian and Liaoning over the next six months, the report said.

 

[osxcza]

scums are tiongs of the earth

 

[Sabra]

Hoverboard inventor says he has made no money - mostly because of cheap Chinese knock-offs

PUBLISHED : Sunday, 10 January, 2016, 2:44pm
UPDATED : Sunday, 10 January, 2016, 5:15pm

The Guardian

Shane Chen.

Shortly before Christmas, with sales of hoverboards surging as the must-have gadget of 2015, Shane Chen flew to China to confront his tormentors.

Chen is the man who developed and patented the hoverboard design in his lab on the US west coast four years ago. With its two wheels, the “hoverboard” doesn’t quite match up to the promise of its namesake in Back to the Future – but that has not put a dent in its popularity.

Hundreds of thousands of hoverboards have been flying off shelves; celebrities have posted videos of themselves riding – and falling – off them. Even a Filipino priest got in on the act – and was promptly suspended for riding one during Christmas Eve mass.

Someone was making lots of money, but it wasn’t Chen. He marketed his design under the brand name Hovertrax, which sold for about US$1,000. Cheap imitations, made in Chinese factories, have flooded the market at about one quarter of the cost.

“We only made maybe a few thousand,” Chen said. “I got a report that there are over 11,000 factories making them in China. They made more than a million.”

In December, Chen went to China to see for himself. “I visited some of the knock-off factories. They actually thanked me for having the imagination to invent it. They understand they’ve infringed my patent but they know there’s nothing I can do,” he said.

So he hasn’t gotten rich off his invention? “No, no,” he sighed. “If you look at history, inventors are usually poor. Other people make money. By the time we did the Hovertrax I was kind of used to it because there are about six of my inventions that have been copied over the past 10 years.”

The offices of his company, Inventist, in the small town of Camas, Washington, are littered with the carcasses of failed inventions that demonstrate Chen’s taste for trying to get people on the move. They include prototypes for various kinds of water craft, bicycles with odd limbs welded on, a cluster of cannibalised scooters and a device resembling a small first world war tank.

“It’s designed to pull skiers uphill. They stick it in a backpack when they ski back down. It works but I was never happy with it so I never put it on to the market,” he said.

“I’m constantly inventing things. There are usually five or six different things I’m working on. Most of them fail but I’m getting better. In an earlier time, one in a hundred worked. Now maybe one in five or 10.”

Among those that have paid off is a human-powered hydrofoil, the AquaSkipper, which made enough to fund other projects. He also made money from a scooter called the Powerwing and his first marketed invention, an exercise device, the Bodytoner. But there’s been nothing like the hoverboard – and there nearly wasn’t.

Whizboard Store manager 'Mor Loud' demonstrates the Hoverboard on Broadway in Times Square in New York.

It has its roots in the invention of which Chen is much prouder, and which he uses day to day – a motorised single wheel with foot plates on either side, the Solowheel. The rider stands upright without anything to hold or sit on – what you might get if a unicycle bred with a Segway. At 10mph, it goes twice as fast as a hoverboard and is more practical for getting around the streets because of its larger wheel fitted with a bicycle-style tyre.

The problem, Chen said, is that people take one look and can’t imagine how they stay on. At one point his daughter was demonstrating it at a trade show when she put one on each foot. “Then she could spin, stand still, go backwards,” he said. The idea for the hoverboard was born. He took the two wheels and joined them with a board. The design was modified through various prototypes, shrinking the wheels and moving them into the board.

Interest was scant at first. “We were riding around on it and no one cared,” he said. He improved the design and took it to other trade shows but it was not until last year that the hoverboard took off. “It has to be around long enough that everyone wants one. I saw a story that when Thomas Edison invented the light bulb nobody wanted it. They were telling him that the flame in the lamp was better. You can see the problem,” he said.

Chen was not even that enthusiastic himself. He still regarded the Solowheel as the better invention. “Hovertrax to me is just a toy. A toy for kids, for adults. It’s fun. But you cannot use it for transportation. It’s not practical,” he said.

But once interest took hold, he lost control. “When you have a product that sells a few, you can easily stop the knock-offs. When the product becomes too valuable, there’s nothing you can do,” he said. “It’s like a tsunami. Legal or illegal, they’re just going to do it. It’s like drugs, marijuana.”

Still, it grates with Chen that big supermarkets and department stores facilitate the counterfeiters by dealing in knockoffs. “It is very discouraging. The patent system is not working if something is popular. With something like Hovertrax, the patent is almost useless.”

Chen acknowledges that the problem is the price. He has put out a cheaper version that is nearly half the cost of the original but he said there is only so far he can go. The counterfeits save production costs with weaker motors and low-quality batteries, but that leaves them underpowered and unstable, making riders more likely to fall. They are also more likely to catch fire, which is why some airlines have banned them. “We explain to consumers, this has to be built safely. It cannot be that cheap. They don’t care. They want it and they want cheap ones,” he said.

All of this is all the more frustrating because Chen left China nearly three decades ago to get away from a system he regarded as too restrictive before the free-for-all. He worked for many years in a Chinese government job designing scientific instruments but wanted to found his own company and decided the US was the place to do it. He moved in 1986, established a scientific instrument design business but sold that five years ago to get on with what really interested him: inventing things.

Chen hasn’t given up on Hovertrax. But what interests him is the next big thing. He holds up a plastic jumble that looks as if it might be a salad washer. It turns out to be a battery-operated water jet for a one person hydrofoil. “You fly along the water with very little drag. You use very little energy. I think this will replace the jet ski. The jet ski is noisy and dangerous. This is very quiet,” he said. But it’s wheels that really excite him.

“This is the best of all my inventions,” he said, pushing forward a box marked Lunicycle. It’s another single wheel but with pedals. A unicycle without the pole or the saddle.” You pedal standing up. The unicycle is very hard to learn. It takes about six months. People can learn this in half an hour. We just started selling them. We don’t know how to market it, how to tell people, because people think that it’s a unicycle,” he said, sounding genuinely baffled at the confusion.

 

[Sabra]

Counterfeit Viagra, other fake drugs seized

China Daily, January 19, 2016

Police seized more than 88,000 counterfeit Viagra pills and 95,000 other doses of fake aphrodisiacs after cracking a major counterfeit medicine ring last year in Dongguan, a Pearl River delta city of Guangdong province.

Another 1.42 million unfinished doses of the fake drugs were seized in the case that involved 230 different kinds of imitation medicines with a retail value of more than 37 million yuan ($5.65 million), Huang Shouying, director of the economic crime investigation bureau with the Guangdong provincial department of public security, said on Tuesday.

In addition, a major criminal gang that produced and sold fake medicines and a secret trafficking network were busted during raids in the previous year, Huang said.

"A total of 23 suspects were detained during a special campaign launched late last year," Huang said.

Local police established a special task force to investigate the fake drug case after seizing 509 fake Viagra pills at a drugstore in Dongguan's Tangxia township last August. Special operations were launched with the cooperation with police in Guangdong’s Guangzhou and Qingyuan cities and Hunan and Henan provinces.

The raids have dealt a heavy blow to local drug counterfeiting, Huang said.

 

[Sabra]

Doctors forge birth certificates to get trafficked children hukou

Source: Global Times Published: 2016-2-2 20:23:01

A police officer returns an abducted Vietnamese baby to his parent in Fangchenggang, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in May 2013. Photo: CFP

Two hospital officials in South China's Guangdong Province who forged birth certificates for trafficked children in exchange for cash were each sentenced to one year in prison, Beijing-based newspaper The Mirror reported Monday.

Liang Shaoquan, director of the obstetrics and gynecology department of Tieyong township hospital, got nurses to forge documents including birth records, and then had the office director stamp them before issuing fake birth certificates and selling them for 3,000 yuan ($456) each. These couples could then get trafficked children hukou, or household registration.

Liang issued fake birth certificates for five couples in a year. The case attracted wide attention after a China Central Television (CCTV) undercover investigations exposed it in November 2014 and January 2015, which led to a 10-month campaign in Guangdong to crack down on birth certificate fraud.

However, the trade in fake birth certificates is still rampant online, which makes it easy for people either buying trafficked babies or having extra babies to illegally obtain legal identities for children.

A scandal is born

Sun Haiyang, the father of an abducted child and anti-child trafficking volunteer, posted on his Weibo on October 31, 2014 that more than 10 children with unclear origins suddenly appeared in a village, and he was about to rescue them.

Families in the village in Tongfang township, Changting county, East China's Fujian Province, openly admitted to Sun that they spent around 50,000 yuan registering their purchased children. A woman proudly said that she only paid 20,000 yuan to get a hukou for "her" child.

CCTV journalists picked up on the case, which resulted in the police rescuing five trafficked children.

According to the report, families that purchased two of the five trafficked children bought birth certificates to register the children. "One family bought the certificate for 1,000 yuan from Guangdong," Liu Huisheng, a police officer with Changting county public security department told CCTV. The birth certificate in this case came from Tieyong hospital and was signed by Liang.

Liang told undercover CCTV reporters that he could even get a birth certificate issued in 2011 from another county-level hospital for 7,500 yuan.

Tieyong hospital is the only public hospital in the township, and the hospital's practice of using handwritten documents made it easier for Liang to forge certificates. Most hospitals have adopted electronic filing systems.

Local authorities soon started investigating the case following the CCTV reports, and Liang and the office director, Dong Peiman, were detained in January 2015.

But forged birth certificates are still available online, with many forgers charging around 8,000 to 20,000 yuan.

According to The Mirror newspaper, most buyers purchase fake documents to get hukou for abducted children or children born outside the family planning policy.

Closing loopholes

An another doctor from Liang's department told The Mirror that birth certificates are newborns' only legal identity proof. Parents usually go to the hospital that delivered their baby to apply for a birth certificate within a month of the birth. Issuing the certificate requires a stamp from a hospital seal kept by one doctor, a blank certificate provided by a different doctor and a signature from a third doctor, according to the doctor.

"In many grassroots hospitals, only one or two doctors are in charge of birth certificates. In this case, it's easy to find management loopholes," the doctor disclosed.

Birth certificates are vital for newborn babies to get hukou and to later enroll in schools.

"To get a hukou for their newborns, parents should register the baby at a local police station with its birth certificate, and then police keep a copy of the certificate as a proof," a police officer told The Mirror.

Trafficked babies who are given a hukou receive new identities, making it virtually impossible for police and their biological parents to ever find them, the officer said.

An anti-children trafficking expert, Zaizai (pseudonym), who has helped rescue over 100 children since 2007, said that fighting trafficking would be much easier if the government closed loopholes in issuing birth certificates.

"There will be less people buying trafficked children if they cannot get hukou for them," Zaizai said, The Mirror reported.

 

[flickr]

I worry when Tiongs stop copying

 

[zvntwu]

Stupid Tiongs making cheap shoddy knock-offs for marginally thin profits that explodes

 

[NoLimit]

​

 

[nxeaszc]

I worry when tiongs stop copying

 

[Sabra]

Fake grooms and brides for hire: Chinese Lunar New Year sees boom for businesses serving mainlanders too afraid to go home alone

Many mainlanders and businesses help desperate unmarried people – many the only child of the family – under pressure from parents wanting to see their bloodline continue

PUBLISHED : Sunday, 07 February, 2016, 8:00am
UPDATED : Sunday, 07 February, 2016, 8:00am

Kathy Gao
[email protected]

A couple poses for a wedding photo in Shanghai, China. Single people aged in their late 20s or older can expect a grilling from parents and relatives if they return home alone at Lunar New Year. Photo: AP

Charming, funny and diligent, Chen Gang, 31, is the ideal Chinese son-in-law – the kind of man every mainland parent would dream of their daughter marrying. The perfect marrying man.

He chats with ease to guests at wedding ceremonies, providing witty remarks to help people warm to him, and is always eager to lend a hand with household chores in front of his in-laws. But he has had practice: he has already been married – and divorced – three times as part of his job.

Chen (not his real name), from the western Chinese city of Chengdu, in Sichuan province – home to the nation’s giant pandas – is one of an increasing number of young mainlanders, both men and women, who earn their living renting themselves out to meet demand for fake grooms or brides, particularly around Chinese Lunar New Year.

Now is the time when single people aged in their late 20s or older can expect a grilling from parents and relatives if they return home alone.

The increase in Chinese turning to marriage rental businesses to solve such a problem underscores the enormous pressure facing most single people that have grown up in modern-day China during the decades of the one-child policy; without brothers and sisters to share their family’s expectations, China’s more highly educated and liberal younger generation are now challenging old traditions – or, through fake marriages – at least delaying their problem.

Most Chinese parents today still expect their children to get married before they reach their 30s, but those same children are becoming increasingly careful about choosing their significant other.

Chen started out renting his services as a boyfriend in 2010. Spotting the huge opportunities – and profits – through fake marriages, he first got married in 2014 after a young Shandong woman approached him.

“I charge 1,500 yuan (HK$1,700) a day for wedding ceremonies and made more than 15,000 yuan from the wedding I had in Shandong,” Chen said.

Since then he has been married – and divorced – twice more and has kept his divorce certificates like souvenirs.

Each one of Chen’s three marriages was meticulously prepared by him and his clients – so much so that none of the clients’ parents suspected the marriages were anything but genuine.

Chen said he and others employed in the groom-and-bride “rental” industry catered mostly to desperate single people who were being forced to get married by their parents. Some of them were homosexuals who wanted to use a fake marriage to appease their family.

“Most children are the only child of the family,”Chen said. “Parents are generally part of the older generation, and are very traditional, and they want to have grandchildren to carry on their family’s bloodline,” Chen said.

That pressure is especially acute during Lunar New Year when everyone, including millions of migrant workers, return home to their families.

Unlike in the West, marriages in China involve the families and parents of both the bride and groom taking an active role in the selection of their child’s prospective partners, said Lu Zheng of the Guangdong Academy of Social Sciences, who has carried out research into youth marriage attitudes in Guangdong.

Renting a groom or bride for wedding ceremonies is an offshoot of the lucrative business or hiring boyfriends and girlfriends, which also peaks around the annual new year holiday festival.

It is possible to rent a partner by phone, or from the comfort of your home, using the online retail giant Alibaba’s Taobao.com and a number of websites that offer such services.

The popular Chinese social media messaging tool, WeChat, is host to many public accounts that offer girlfriends and boyfriends for rent.

Qiu Haibo, who lives in Kunming, the capital city of Yunnan province, in the southeast of the country, is the chief executive of a start-up company that is developing an app for offering rental services.

His app, called Zuyouwang, which means “Friend rental site”, became officially available on Friday three days before the start of the Year of the Monkey.

Demand for such services means Qiu’s company has received financing of two million yuan by angel investors. Qiu predicts a rosy future for his business.

“People are busy and don’t have time to socialise,” he said. “But young Chinese today are relatively better off than those in the past and they can afford to pay for things like renting a partner.”

Requests for girlfriends far exceeds those for men and Qiu said his business has seen demand peaking as the Lunar New Year approaches.

Although most people that want to use Qiu’s platform are looking simply for a temporary solution, some people – particularly men – often hope they can find their true love by renting a partner.

The price for renting a girlfriend of boyfriend varies, but the cost of renting someone you can bring home to your parents during Lunar New Year generally costs more than 1,000 yuan a day. Charges for a fake marriage are even more expensive.

In China today, single people, particularly women in their late 20s. are described as “leftover”, reflecting the society’s general attitude towards unmarried people.

Well-educated women find it hard to date eligible bachelors when most Chinese men still prefer women that are less educated or capable than they are.

Thousands of men living in China’s countryside remain single. Their poor economic status, compounded by gender imbalance in the country make these “bare branches” – as bachelors are known in Chinese – ever more unmarriable. According to China’s 2010 census, the ratio of newborn girls and boys was 100 to 117.9.

Newlyweds pose during a wedding at Xiazhuang Village in Xiaoyi, Shanxi province. Photo: Xinhua

With no suitable candidate for marriage in sight, young Chinese singletons that feel pressured and frequently nagged by their families have increasingly resorted to fake marriage to ease the tension between them and their parents.

However, experts say that faking a marriage or renting partners is unlikely to solve the problem of the ever-growing chasm that exists between mainland parents and their children.

“Fake marriages are totally at odds with the seriousness of marriage and are also immoral,” Lu said.

The difference in the perceptions of children and their parents with regard to marriage highlighted the lack of communication between the two generations, Lu said.

“Children hire brides and grooms to ease tensions, but actually that can achieve the exact opposite to the planned purpose,” Lu said.

Apart from the possibility of upsetting parents, safety is also a big concern for most of the women who rent themselves out as girlfriends and brides at this time of year.

While most would stay away from any sexual relationship as part of the business deal, there have been cases where the fake couple have ended up sleeping together.

Chen, who now runs a website that specialises in the partner rental business, said requests for partners had rocketed in the days before the start of Lunar New Year.

He said he regarded himself simply an actor in real life. Although he admitted that occasionally he had been overwhelmed with pity for his duped in-laws, he said he was doing vastly more good than evil through his actions.

Indeed, last year Chen even rented a girlfriend himself over the Lunar New Year holiday to take home to please his ageing parents, who have long been nagging him about getting married.

”My father didn’t even want to talk to me when I arrived,” Chen said. “But then, when he saw I had brought a girl home, his grumpy face broke into a smile and he actually started speaking to me.”

 

[Sabra]

Chinese TV dramas urged to copy South Korean hit to improve image of military and boost army recruitment

PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 22 March, 2016, 11:12am
UPDATED : Tuesday, 22 March, 2016, 11:12am
Catherine Wong

Chinese President Xi Jinping shakes hands with deputies to the 12th National People's Congress from the People's Liberation in Beijing. Photo: Xinhua

China’s official army newspaper says the nation’s TV industry should make programmes like the South Korean hit drama Descendants of the Sun to improve the image of the military and help it enlist more troops.

A commentary in the PLA Daily said the programme presented a modern image of South Korea’s armed forces and highlighted the spirit of the nation.

“We have the resources to make a TV drama like this, which our soldiers would be interested to watch. And we should totally make a TV drama like this,” the commentary said.

The South Korean series, starring the actress Song Hye-kyo, tells the love story between a special forces captain and a doctor. It has proved a huge hit in China since the show was first aired about a month ago.

China’s military themed TV dramas often portray Communist-led Chinese forces fighting the Japanese during the second world war.

The series are often the subject of ridicule among viewers because of their perceived poor scripts and illogical plots. [A scene from “Descendants of the Sun”. Photo: SCMP Pictures]

A commentary posted last year by the state-run Xinhua news agency mocked military-themed TV series, which have included scenes of troops throwing rocks to bring down a Japanese military aircraft and a soldier ripping open a Japanese soldier’s body with his bare hands.

The PLA Daily commentary praised the South Korean drama’s high production values, creative script, and professional acting.

China tightens censorship of online TV programmes days after suspending shows featuring gay love, excessive sex and violence

It said the programme “has shown respect to the audience’s intellect and aesthetic appreciation”, and that it would make a great job advert to recruit soldiers.

The commentary also said the PLA’s increasing involvement in joint drills with other countries and role in international rescue and aid missions should provide inspiration for China’s movie industry to produce more military-themed entertainment.

 

[NoLimit]

China punishes film distributor for faking Ip Man 3 box office receipts

Beijing Max Screen admits fabricating 7,600 screenings of Donnie Yen film and buying 56 million yuan of tickets itself, in case that lifts lid on fraud a regulator says is so widespread it’s harming Chinese cinema

PUBLISHED : Monday, 21 March, 2016, 1:44pm
UPDATED : Monday, 21 March, 2016, 1:50pm
Reuters

China’s film regulator has suspended the distribution licence of a company accused of fraudulently boosting box office figures for the martial arts movie Ip Man 3 by millions of dollars, Xinhua reported.

Claims that the film made more than 500 million yuan at the box office in its first four days raised questions that prompted distributor Beijing Max Screen to admit it bought 56 million yuan of tickets itself, Xinhua quoted the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television as saying.

The company also fabricated more than 7,600 screenings that it claimed generated 32 million yuan in ticket sales, Xinhua reported.

Donnie Yen (seated) and Danny Chan (as Bruce Lee) in a scene from Ip Man 3

Max Screen said it had “studied and fully accepted” the punishment, according to Xinhua. The distributor could not be immediately reached for comment.

The case casts doubt over the stellar growth figures of China’s box office receipts in recent years.

While the North American market, still the world’s largest, has seen box office growth slow, ticket sales in China rose to around 44 billion yuan last year, up nearly 50 per cent from 2014, Xinhua said in an earlier report.

In February, monthly ticket sales in China exceeded those in the United States for the first time, propelled by Stephen Chow hit The Mermaid and the week-long Lunar New Year holiday.

The state administration’s film bureau said it had ordered Beijing Max Screen to suspend distribution for one month while the firm “rectifies all malpractices”, and issued warnings to three groups selling electronic tickets that were involved in the fraud, as well as 73 cinemas, Xinhua reported.

“These kinds of issues could be considered inevitable in a young industry, but box office fraud has become so serious that it is already harming Chinese cinema,” Zhang Hongsen, head of the film bureau, was quoted as saying.

“Filmmaking and screening are two wings of one bird and they have to rely on each other. Only a regulated and healthy market can give birth to quality films,” he said.

Xinhua said the Chinese film industry had been blighted by cinemas and distributors cheating to inflate box office figures through accounting ploys or other tricks, such as claiming ticket sales that exceed an auditorium’s capacity.

Reuters

 

[Sabra]

Fake vaccines blamed for killing 800 rabbits on farm in China

Farmer bought heavily discounted drugs for 300 yuan, causing him 100 times more than that amount in economic losses

PUBLISHED : Friday, 25 March, 2016, 5:50pm
UPDATED : Friday, 25 March, 2016, 5:52pm
Catherine Wong

More than 800 rabbits have died on a farm in central China after they received vaccines bought from an illegal vendor, local media reports.

The farmer, surnamed Li, bought 10 boxes of vaccine for 300 yuan (HK$360) in Luoyang, Henan province on December 22 from a salesman who claimed to work for a local animal vaccine producer, the Dahe Daily reported on Friday.

The salesman offered to sell Li the vaccines for 30 yuan (HK$36) per box – 20 yuan cheaper than similar vaccines from other brands.

However, his rabbits started dying in January. By the end of February, more that 800 of this 1,000 animals died within 21/2 months of being vaccinated, causing him 30,000 yuan in economic losses.

Couple arrested for selling fake vaccines

Zoologists at a local veterinary society confirmed to Li that the rabbits died of viral haemorrhagic disease caused by the expired vaccine.

Reporters contacted the manufacturer named on the vaccine package on Thursday, but the staff member said they did not produce those vaccines that Li purchased.

According to the report, Li called the salesman after the death of his rabbits, but he did not give any explanation.

When Li visited the property listed on the packaging as the company address, the woman who answered the door said it was a residential apartment and that she did not know about the company.

Li reported the case to police on Thursday.

 

[NoLimit]

Shanghai arrests six people over 17,000 tins of counterfeit baby formula

PUBLISHED : Friday, 01 April, 2016, 8:31pm
UPDATED : Friday, 01 April, 2016, 8:39pm

Mandy Zuo
[email protected]

Shanghai authorities have arrested six people suspected of manufacturing and selling more than 17,000 tins of counterfeit baby formula in several provinces.

The suspects were accused of buying cheap baby formula and adult milk powder and packaging it in fake tins of famous brands, China’s top prosecutor the Supreme People’s Procuratorate said in an article posted on its website last week.

It said the products were sold to retailers in cities including Zhengzhou, Xuzhou, Changsha, and Yanzhou, and then circulated to more places, it said, without specifying which. It didn’t say how many and which brands were involved.

The group made nearly 2 million yuan (HK$2.4 million) by collecting cheap milk powder, making fake tins, and then packaging and selling the goods, it said.

Shanghai police requested arrest warrants for seven people in early January after receiving a tip-off and launched an investigation in September last year, the article said.

Prosecutors approved a week later the arrest of six of them, and required supplementary investigation into the other one.

It was the No. 3 Municipal Procuratorate’s first suggestion this year for police to improve evidence. It also asked the police to intensify efforts in capturing those on the run, the website said.

 

[NoLimit]

10 jailed over fake beef jerky

Xinhua, March 31, 2016

A court in east China's Zhejiang Province sentenced 10 people to prison terms ranging from 16 months to 15 years on Thursday for selling pork as beef porky.

The Wenzhou Intermediate People's Court gave a man surnamed Fang 15 years in prison and fined him 4 million yuan (618,800 U.S. dollars) for his role in the scam.

According to the indictment, Fang asked a man surnamed Zhu, who ran a meat processing plant in Wenzhou with his wife, to manufacture the fake jerky for him in March 2013.

They added beef powders, caramel pigment and other additives to pork.

Zhu and his wife rented three rooms in a remote village to secretly produce the fake jerky from June 2014 to January 2015, churning out between 250 to 500 kg of their product every day. Zhu's daughter and son-in-law and some other family members also participated in the production.

Zhu sold the fake beef jerky to Fang who asked a person surnamed Zheng to pack and sell it to many other provinces, the court said.

Zhu was sentenced to 15 years in jail and fined 1.5 million yuan. The other eight defendants were sentenced to imprisonment ranging from 16 months to 10 years.

 

[NoLimit]

Baby formula scare: China’s food safety watchdog ‘acted to avoid public panic’

The China Food and Drug Administration backtracks on earlier claim that illegally produced cans met national standards

PUBLISHED : Friday, 08 April, 2016, 1:08pm
UPDATED : Friday, 08 April, 2016, 11:18pm

Ting Yan

Mainland China’s food safety watchdog has backtracked on its endorsement of baby milk powder exposed as fake, saying its earlier approval was aimed at preventing a panic.

The case has also sparked questions from the public and media about why the government withheld information about the fake products for months after suspects were arrested.

About 17,000 cans of formula sold in several provinces have been traced to a syndicate that took cheap milk powder or product with defective packaging and sold it under multiple brand names, some of them top-sellers.

Shanghai police began investigating the syndicate in September and arrested six people in January. But the public only learned of the fake formula on March 22, when the Procuratorate Daily, the mouthpiece of the national prosecutor’s office, revealed details of the case.

On Monday, the China Food and Drug Administration said the products seized by the police had passed its quality tests and met national standards. It said the formula did not pose a health risk.

Shoppers at a supermarket in Haikou, in south China's Hainan province. About 17,000 cans of counterfeit baby milk formula have been traced to a syndicate but officials insisted the product was safe. Photo: AFP

Among the companies whose products were counterfeited by the syndicate were global brand Abbott and leading domestic seller Beingmate.

After its initial statement drew a massive public outcry, however, the watchdog said on Wednesday that its initial response was aimed at reminding consumers “not to panic” if they had bought the products.

But producing or selling counterfeit milk powder violates both commercial fraud and intellectual rights laws. The state authority said consumers could seek compensation from retailers.

Food safety authorities in seven mainland provinces and municipalities are, under the order of the State Council, trying to trace the fake formula.

Public confidence in infant formula has been shaky since 2008 when 300,000 babies across the mainland were found to have suffered kidney damage after having consumed melamine-tainted milk powder. Six infants died.

More recently, a mother and daughter in Shandong province were arrested for running a massive network that distributed expired or improperly stored vaccines across the country for five years.

The scandal involved vaccines valued at some 570 million yuan (HK$683 million).

“It is not difficult to gain public trust ... if the [diary] industry builds up its credibility and [the authorities] disseminate information in a timely and complete manner,” said a commentary in The Beijing News. “But with little information available for the public ... telling them ‘not to panic’ could lead people think the other way.”

Since the fake-formula scandal broke, sales of Abbott and Beingmate milk products had dropped significantly in supermarkets in Chengdu in southwest Sichuan province, according to the Sichuan Daily.

Abbott said it spotted counterfeit milk powder under its brand last year and alerted the police. The first suspects were apprehended in December and the formula was seized by the authorities, the company said on its Weibo account.

 

[Sabra]

Police break up counterfeiting ring; 14 held

China Daily, April 15, 2016

Police in Jiangsu province have caught 14 suspects who allegedly used a printer and soy sauce to counterfeit money that they said could easily fool most people.

According to Wang Tao, director of Dawu police station in Xuzhou, police detained a suspect that used counterfeit money in January. The suspect reported that his friend, surnamed Zhao, provided him with the false bills.

Zhao later confessed that he bought partially prepared bills from a wholesaler nicknamed "KK" on the Internet and then used certain materials, including soy sauce, to make the bills look older, Wang said.

"Zhao and his accomplices, four teenagers, forged more than 10,000 yuan ($1,540) and then used it across Xuzhou," Wang said. "With the information provided by the suspects, we went to 26 provinces and cracked down on the counterfeiting network, which covered 90 cities."

So far, police have busted six production centers and one sales center and seized various kinds of equipment used to counterfeit money.

More than 4 million yuan in counterfeit money and 600 kilograms of paper used to print the bills have been confiscated.

According to police, the paper could have been used to print more than 100 million yuan in counterfeit money.

"Almost all the suspects are computer experts," Wang said. "They showed talent in making the right images and colors. The watermarks and fluorescence they made really resemble the real ones."

One of the wholesalers, surnamed Zhang, was caught with more than 1.3 million yuan in counterfeit money and 900,000 yuan in partially prepared bills. According to police, he said the forged bills could fool counterfeit detectors.

"We did some experiments with the counterfeit money," said Gao Xinchun, head of the economic investigation brigade under the public security bureau in Xuzhou's Jiawang district. "Many shop owners took them for real ones and accepted them without hesitation."

Gao suggested that people should remain alert when they are using bills, especially when large sums are received.