Shanghai began closing down its downtown Xiangyang market yesterday, an open-air bazaar famous for cheap-priced counterfeit brand goods, and a symbol of the Chinese city's failure to crackdown on piracy.
As shoppers, both foreign and local, crowded in looking for last-minute bargains, peddlers were busy handing out name cards for new locations, mostly in 10 other markets that will not be affected by Xiangyang's closure.
"This market is full of fake goods, the atmosphere of piracy, has given Shanghai a very bad image," Xu Zhanglin, an official with the city's Intellectual Property Rights Bureau told the local newspaper Oriental Morning Post.
PHOTO: EPA
But Xu noted that the market brought in nearly 30 million yuan (US$3.7 million) in tax revenues a year.
Early yesterday, helmeted market inspectors gathered at the market and began removing items from stalls, beginning with a mall at the front of the market.
Xiangyang, named after a nearby street, is being closed to make way for a subway station and shopping complex, although city officials have touted the move as a blow against rampant piracy of brand-name items.
Image
"Personally, I think the city government wants to build a better image because of people's perceptions internationally," said Jack Chang, chairman of the Quality Brands Protection Committee, a group set up by foreign companies to work against piracy.
Despite occasional high-profile raids, sales of counterfeit products are widely tolerated in China.
Shanghai's tour guides made Xiangyang, set up six years earlier when shopkeepers were moved from another area earmarked for demolition, a regular stop on their itineraries.
Dozens if not hundreds of touts loiter around the market, shoving catalogues of fake luxury brand handbags and watches into the faces of passers-by in the hope of luring them into nearby back-alley shops set up to evade periodic market crackdowns.
Many of the peddlers said that they would keep those shops open, despite the closure of the market.
In the market's final days even more hawkers than usual crowded into the area, hauling fake DVDs in suitcases and taking over the sidewalks with displays of cheap jewelry and hair ornaments.
Discounts
"Entire shop special discounts!" said signs posted on virtually every market stall. Normally low prices dropped still lower, with fake Ralph Lauren polo shirts selling for an average 30 yuan and Pokemon game cards for 25 yuan.
Most, if not all, of the products being sold were flawed merchandise, some of the shopkeepers said.
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