Counterfeited in China

Ko-lin Chin is Distinguished Professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University-Newark. He is the coauthor of The Chinese Heroin Trade: Cross-border Drug Trafficking in Southeast Asiaand Beyond, and Selling Sex Overseas: Chinese Women and the Realities of Prostitution and Global Sex Trafficking, and the author of The Golden Triangle: Inside Southeast Asia’s Drug Trade, and Smuggled Chinese: Clandestine Immigration to the United States (Temple).

"[F]ocusing on some of the most popular counterfeited products: luxury handbags, apparel and shoes. Chin’s arguments and evidence are convincing and portray an accurate picture of counterfeiting in Guangzhou.... Chin’s study dispels some common myths about counterfeiting in China." - The China Quarterly “Counterfeiting is a vast, multibillion-dollar industry, with most production concentrated in China. While general estimates of profits and turnover exist, very little is known about the people involved. Enter Ko-lin Chin, a master ethnographer with several groundbreaking books to his credit. In Counterfeited in China, he meets the workers and offers a comprehensive portrait of this booming industry. Among Chin’s many fascinating insights is his conclusion that producers largely operate independently of organized crime groups. This study is another outstanding contribution by Chin to the ethnography of criminal markets and essential reading for scholars and policymakers alike.” - Federico Varese, Professor of Sociology at Sciences Po, Paris; Senior Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford University; and author of Mafia Life: Love, Death and Money at the Heart of Organised Crime “With this book, Ko-lin Chin delivers another trailblazing examination of a major illicit trade in Asia. Counterfeited in China draws on seventy interviews with counterfeiters and insiders, illuminating a major dark side of the global manufacturing powerhouse. Chin distinguishes between different forms of counterfeiting, highlighting their varying degrees of illegality, and shows how their growth has been promoted by China’s economic transformation and, more recently, by the rise of e-commerce. Most strikingly, he reveals that the individuals behind these enterprises are not hardened criminals but ordinary men and women—many from rural backgrounds—striving to get by, who hardly have any connection to organized crime syndicates. A must-read for scholars of illegal markets and organized crime.” - Letizia Paoli, Professor of Criminology at the KU Leuven Faculty of Law and Criminology, Belgium, and author of Mafia Brotherhoods: Organized Crime, Italian Style