The emergence of counterfeit and shoddy goods in modern society has a history of more than one hundred years. The middle of the 19th century was a period of rapid industrial and commercial development in the United Kingdom, which was also the most serious period of the proliferation of counterfeit and shoddy goods, and a similar situation occurred in post-war Japan, Taiwan Province of China, and other countries and regions in the economic take-off stage. How much do we know about counterfeit goods in China? The ones that have been investigated and dealt with are only a small part of the iceberg that has surfaced. Counterfeit cigarettes of famous brands amount to about 1 million cartons a year, and the counterfeit of famous cigarettes is one of the industries that have been better caught, but only 10%-20% of them have been investigated and dealt with at most. In 1993, according to an investigation conducted by Dongfeng Automobile Company based on the complaints of users, there were 2,000 counterfeit Dongfeng cars in that year, and according to the estimation of the company, there were about 20,000 fake Dongfeng cars in the domestic assembly industry. The proportion of counterfeit famous and high-quality liquor to genuine liquor has remained high in the past few years. As for a large number of counterfeits of famous brand clothing and non-compliance with the labeling of the content of fiber products, basically nothing has been investigated and dealt with. As a result, some estimate that at best only one-tenth of the counterfeit goods on the market have been investigated and dealt with, and a People's Daily report even estimated that only one-twentieth of them have been detected.
Fraudulent Behavior Driven by Profit
In the first few years, as long as they could muddle through in the competitive market, some people would mix bricks and sand into cotton bales for sale; make "soft drinks" with saccharin, coloring and flavoring; and sell "famous" white goods blended with methanol. They will sell "famous" white wine made with methanol to those who are organizing new marriage banquets and entertaining guests from all walks of life; they will mix 50% starch with 50% talcum powder and press it into all kinds of "antimicrobial" tablets to deceive pharmacists, doctors and patients; they will put other people's trademarks on the market in a dignified manner; they will put other people's trademarks on the market in a dignified manner; they will put other people's trademarks on the market in a dignified manner. The trademarks of other people are pasted on their own crude products in a dignified manner, posing as famous and high-quality products, and so on. Under the highly planned economy, the government intervenes directly and comprehensively in the economy through directive plans, and the government is the direct and concrete organizer of national economic development, as well as the main body of property rights and interests, while the enterprises are the appendages of the government agencies. What to produce? How much to produce? What quality standards should production be organized according to? How to sell the products? etc. were arranged by the state's directive plan, the circulation of products was unified by the state, and the market system was basically closed. Enterprises and laborers have not given full play to their enthusiasm, especially in the shortages of economic years, the level of productivity is relatively low, the outstanding problems of the products at that time is the small number of varieties, poor quality, low grade.
The market economy is a competitive, efficient and differentiated economy. Under the conditions of market economy, enterprises are the main body of property rights and interests, and the pursuit of profit maximization is the goal of enterprises, and also the key to the vitality and vigor of enterprises. The market economy is like an invisible whip, always lashing the producers of commodities to keep pursuing individual labor time lower than the socially necessary labor time, and to keep pursuing the maximum output with the minimum input. The market system is open, and the market economy has indeed mobilized the lever of personal interest, stimulating people's strong desire to get rich. This has led to two possible tendencies: the vast majority of enterprises and workers study the needs of the market, continuously develop marketable products, strengthen management, compete fairly, legitimately and legally, and realize their own interests in this way. On the contrary, a very small number of people see profit and forget about righteousness, disregard laws and morals, and get rich by using poor equipment, cheap labor, and low-quality and cheap raw materials. The market economy's principle of emphasizing profit is also a hidden value orientation that induces people to see profit and forget righteousness, leading to money worship and extreme individualism. "The cost and expenses of a bottle of fake Moutai wine are only some 20 yuan, but the selling price can be several hundred yuan, so the profits are staggeringly high. A handmade fake "Hongtashan" cigarettes, the cost of which is only 10 yuan, can be sold on the market for nearly 100 yuan as the real thing. In some commodities markets in Zhejiang, a bottle of fake green orchid cosmetics sells for only a few dollars, and is sold in places such as Anhui for up to tens of dollars. A batch of fake pesticides seized on the outskirts of Zhengzhou City cost 2,000 yuan per ton and sold for as much as 5-12 million yuan per ton. The more counterfeiters and sellers do, the greater the profit, the more they do, the more they do, the blacker their hearts become. As Marx quoted a passage from Tohonen in Capital: "Once there is a proper profit, capital is bold. If there is a 10% profit, he makes sure to use it everywhere; if there is a 20% profit, he becomes active; if there is a 50% profit, he dares to take risks; for a 100% profit, he dares to trample on all the laws of the earth; if there is a 300% profit, he dares to commit any crime, even at the risk of hanging." (Marx Engels' Complete Works). (The Complete Works of Marx and Engels, Vol. 23, p. 829)
It can be seen that, before the establishment of a good economic order, the profit-tending nature of the market economy often leads to the temptation and drive of some people to resort to such fraudulent behavior as making and selling counterfeits under the temptation and drive of profiteering. It should be said that no society can completely eliminate fraud, only in an effective system and civilized society, fraud will not be easy to get. At present, our country is still in the traditional planned economy system to the socialist market economy system change period, the market development is immature, there are many weak links, so that counterfeit and shoddy goods to breed and spread.
Second, the lack of supervision of the main market
Each producer and operator in the market of goods is the main body of the market, and also the main body of interests. In order to maintain normal market order, must strictly examine the qualifications of the parties concerned to enter the market, strictly limit the entry of those who do not have the qualifications to enter the market, to ensure that the legitimacy of the market main body. No producers, operators or other market participants who have not been approved and registered, and no economic organizations or individuals who have not obtained a business licence, are allowed to enter the market. In industrially developed countries, the requirement of the ability to produce and sell qualified products should also be included in the admission of market subjects. It should be said that in recent years China has made great progress in the supervision of market players. However, there are still three in place in the supervision:
1. The supervision of various types of specialized commodity market operators are not in place. Some specialized commodity markets are places where counterfeit and shoddy goods "dwell" and "distribution centers". 1994, the fourth quarter, the State Bureau of Technical Supervision of Liaoning Wafangdian, Hebei Dingzhou, Shandong Linqing, Zhejiang Luqiao Town, Wenling five bearing market products for supervision and sampling, in which the establishment of a new bearing market, the State Bureau of Technical Supervision, the State Bureau of Technical Supervision of Liaoning Wafangdian, Hebei Dingzhou, Shandong Linqing, Zhejiang Luqiao Town, Wenling five bearing markets. In the fourth quarter of 1994, the State Technical Supervision Bureau conducted supervision and sampling tests on the products of five bearing markets in Wafangdian, Liaoning, Dingzhou, Hebei, Linqing, Shandong, Luqiao, Zhejiang and Wenling, in which the Wafangdian market, which had established a quality supervision station, had a sample passing rate of 81.1%, and the products sampled by the Linqing, Luqiao and Wenling markets, which had not been strictly supervised by the State Technical Supervision Bureau, were not qualified. In the Wuji pharmaceutical market in Hebei before the ban, rows and rows of pharmacies simply did not receive the drug business enterprise licenses issued by the medical and health departments, and only needed to spend money to receive a business license, and a box of Niu Huang Qing Xin Pills produced by Tianjin Da Ren Tang cost 25.6 yuan, which could be purchased for 10 yuan on the market, and the person in charge of the Da Ren Tang Pharmaceutical Factory went to Wuji for six times and found fake Niu Huang Qing Xin Pills.
2. The supervision of township, individual and neighborhood enterprises is not in place. This is the current China's counterfeit and shoddy goods proliferation of the "source", counterfeiters often take "time to escape", that is, to fight and resurgence, comeback; "space to escape", "the wall is clear", "the wall is clear", "the wall is clear", "the wall is clear", "the wall is clear", "the wall is clear", "the wall is clear". "walled-off" or "shoot a gun for a place". Happened in the junction of Fujian and Zhejiang provinces, cheating sales amounted to 150 million yuan of shoddy light machinery cheating sales case, one of the important reasons is that some enterprises are negligent in the review, in less than six months in 1992, a county opened 34 does not have the conditions for the production of qualified products of light machinery factories, all involved in shoddy machinery cheating sales activities. This lesson reminds people, not only to strengthen the pre-opening of various types of industrial and commercial enterprises before the review, but also to strengthen the strict supervision after the opening.
3. The supervision of state-owned commercial enterprises is not in place. Over the years, a considerable number of state-owned commercial enterprises do not pay enough attention to their own business reputation, a small number of state-owned commercial enterprises in order to pursue short-term benefits, leasing counters and stalls by individual contractors, lessees or contractors are often where the goods are cheaper from where the goods, which leads to fake goods inferior goods on the state-owned stores in the hall of elegance of an important reason. Wang Hai, according to the Law on the Protection of Consumer Rights and Interests, double compensation for buying counterfeit goods is frequently won in some big shopping malls in the capital, which shows that the state-owned shopping malls have obvious omissions in strictly guarding the import, storage and sales of goods, and some of them intentionally defraud consumers in order to obtain undue profits.
From the point of view of the social environment, for a period of time, in the economic activities tend to focus only on the pursuit of material benefits, ignoring the spirit of morality and culture, "money fetishism" has led to a decline in moral standards. Especially in China, where the commodity economy is underdeveloped, small commodity producers are large in number, low in cultural quality, and lack understanding of the order of the market economy and the moral norms and laws and regulations that maintain the normal functioning of the market; the small-scale mode of production leads to the occlusion of information, which restricts their horizons; and their short-sightedness makes them keen on short-term behaviors and the practice of "grasping a handful of things" and "doing things by themselves". Short-sightedness makes them keen on short-term behavior, "grabbing a handful of things" and engaging in "one-shot deals"; instead of doing business in accordance with the law and getting rich legitimately, they rely on exploiting loopholes and making illegal profits. Counterfeiters can be found in underground dens, in urban and rural areas where supervision is weak, and in places where commodities are traded and distributed. The sale of counterfeit and shoddy goods by fraudulent means constitutes the most suitable means of competition and a "shortcut" for them to accumulate capital at this stage. It is also believed that when the quality of citizens in a society is not very high, and some of them do not have enough capacity (financial, human and technical) to develop new products, the manufacture of counterfeit and shoddy goods often becomes an important means of survival for representatives of backward productive forces. Of the 85 counterfeiters detained for trial in a county in Anhui Province, 91% were self-employed or unemployed. In Zhejiang Province, of the 149 offenders investigated by the procuratorial organs from January to October 1993, 122, or 81.9 percent, were self-employed or unemployed. China is a country with a variety of economic components, and the number of small commodity producers is larger than that of any other country, and a small number of them have become a "vital force" in the counterfeiting and selling team. It is clear that if China is to make significant progress in curbing counterfeiting, a serious problem is to educate and monitor the vast number of small commodity producers.
Third, the lack of supervision of competitive behavior in the marketplace
Fair competition is a basic principle of a modern market economy. This principle indicates that all kinds of economic subjects have equal opportunities to participate in market activities, exchange on an equal footing, and compete on an equal footing. Without equal and fair competition, there can be no normal market order. At present, the abnormal phenomenon of real goods not being able to compete with fake ones, of good goods not being able to compete with inferior ones, of superiority not being able to win, of inferiority not being eliminated, and of a large number of famous and excellent products being squeezed out of the market is due to the source cover of unfair competition. Among them, especially the purchase and sale of goods in the "rebate" phenomenon is more counterfeiters in the use of unfair competition in the "killer mace", counterfeiters in the sale of the use of money to open the way to a wide variety of names, the means to use the absolute, such as cash rebates, high-grade gifts, Travel and tourism, house decoration, touch awards, and so on. "Kickbacks" are especially important in the transaction of medicines, and it has been reported that the country loses 800 million yuan a year when only 1% of the total amount of medicines is counted as kickbacks. The proliferation of "kickbacks" has deprived some sellers of the opportunity to participate in fair competition. The secret "kickbacks" flowed into the pockets of individuals and bred corruption. Twenty-four individuals from Bobai County, Guangxi Province, sold tens of millions of dollars of medicines in Kunming over a five-year period, and gave "kickbacks" to the directors of the pharmacies and purchasing agents of 19 medical units, with the least amounting to 2,000 yuan, the most amounting to tens of thousands of yuan, or 100,000 yuan in individual cases. A hospital pharmacy director from seven units to receive "kickbacks" of 53,933 yuan, found to be sentenced to 10 years in prison; another hospital pharmacy director after the crime, from his home to find out 3,000 grams of gold, sofa cushions are full of banknotes. High "kickbacks" are an important reason for inducing purchasers to purchase counterfeit and shoddy goods.
The promulgation of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law is a powerful weapon against unfair competition in business activities, and the implementation of the law requires a process. At present, secret off-the-books kickbacks are still prevalent in the sale of commodities, and there is a lack of fair competition in the market environment, and "kickbacks" are the catalyst and lubricant for the sale of counterfeit and substandard commodities in the world.
In summary, in the process of transition from the traditional planned economy to the socialist market economy, the monitoring and control mechanisms already established under the planned economy will inevitably become dysfunctional and weakened, and the formation and functioning of the new monitoring and control mechanisms adapted to the needs of the market economy will take a longer time and process. The degree of weakening of the social supervision and control mechanisms determines the extent to which counterfeit and substandard commodities can flourish and spread. The coexistence of the two systems and the stalemate between them have led to many contradictions, frictions and loopholes in economic life. Therefore, the persistence of counterfeit and shoddy commodities is a companion of the early development process of market economy and a unique social phenomenon under the state of professional ethics failure, which has occurred in many developed countries and regions in the world to varying degrees during the transition period of modernization.