Source: Andrew Bounds and Roman Olearchyk, “Alarm at flood of bogus pesticides,” Financial Times Deutshland, July 1, 2008.

The Wall Street Journal reports on the popularity of the Silk Market in China. From the WSJ: While Chinese authorities have taken aggressive efforts to protect Olympics-related intellectual property, the Silk Market in central Beijing stands out as a symbol of the enduring struggle against counterfeiters. Silk Street has become central to the Olympic experience. Games organizers highlight [...]

Ticket scalpers in China lost money when Chinese Olympic hero Liu Xiang dropped out of the 110 meters hurdles to injury.  From BBC News: Olympic tickets are being sold for as little as a tenth of their previous black-market value after a Chinese athlete dropped out. The price for tickets to see the 110m hurdles plummeted after athletics [...]

The Boston Globe has an article on the makers of Titleist Golf Balls fight against counterfeits in China.  From the Boston Globe:  Jason Yao lives a dangerous life for a guy in the golf business. He gets death threats. He raids factories and markets. He shakes down informants and hangs out with private investigators. He has 10 aliases. China [...]

According to author Moises Naim, ” human smuggling out of China alone has been estimated between $1 and $3 billion per year”. Source: Moises Naim, Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and Copycats are hijacking the global economy, (New York: Doubleday, 2005), pg. 88.

A 1998 study stated that $17 billion is spent on illicit drugs in China every year. Source: International Crime Threat Assessment, “Chapter III: Worldwide areas of International Criminal Activity, China,” December 2000, available from Federation of America Scientists, (accessed: March 9, 2007).

Source: Bloomberg, ” U.S., EU Pledge to Fight Counterfeit Goods From China, Russia,” Bloomberg.com, June 19, 2006.

Scalpers in Beijing are in high demand as they sell tickets to Olympic events that are sold out. From AFP (via Google News): Two weeks before the Games opened the organisers announced that every single Olympic event being held in the Chinese capital had been sold out. When a final tranche of tickets went on sale last month [...]

Chinese authorities are stating that the amount of counterfeit goods being made in China is being exaggerated. From Reuters (via Yahoo News): A Chinese intellectual property official said on Tuesday the world is overestimating the amount of counterfeit goods made in China, and blamed “expensive” copyright goods for driving consumers to fake goods. “There is [...]

Drug traffickers are using Persian carpets to bring illegal drugs into China. From Reuters: Drug traffickers in China’s far west are smuggling heroin into the country woven into carpets imported from Afghanistan and Pakistan, state media said on Tuesday. Customs officials in Xinjiang, which borders both countries, have seized more than 30 carpets containing some 50 kg (110 [...]