In the spirit of honesty, let’s confess that we have all knowingly bought something fake in China (some argue that pirated movies don’t even count anymore). There are in fact malls dedicated to the trading of fake goods in China where tourists spend 20 dollars on the latest Louis Vuitton knockoff. The industry of making and selling fakes is big and sophisticated in China. There is a widely acknowledged grading system where A plus grade （超A货/chao1 A 货) claims to be almost identical to the real deal (don’t fall for the OEM trick. No LV or Gucci are made in China).  Those can set you back at 200-300 dollars a piece. The stuff that you see out in the open are generally low quality fakes marketed to innocent tourists who buy for fun rather than to pose as real.

The length that fake makers go to to fabricate luxury goods is worthy of mentioning. The craftsmanship, the attention to detail down to even the paper box that holds the fake is uncompromising. Only if they could apply the energy to elsewhere…

Now, the ‘fake industry’ has even moved up a further notch. News came out this week that some local ‘official sites’ of LV, Gucci, Chanel, etc have sprung up, of course with crazy domains like gucci.168.cn But some of them are so impressive visually that many consumers fall for the trick and spend thousands of RMB on a fake bag. I did a search on both google and baidu. It didn’t actually return any local fake versions of official sites. But I did saw sites that specialise in custom-made fake bags, i.e. you want a certain model of Chanel bag and one from Hermes, they have all the leather, fabric and metal hardware to assemble one for you. Now, this is taking fake making onto a new level. Sadly, this is something China is too good at.