Dairy products at a supermarket in Xuchang, Henan province. The government's stricter permit requirements, which are expected to keep up to one-third of domestic infant formula producers from manufacturing, is driving up competition between local and foreign dairy brands. Geng Guoqing / For China Daily

Counterfeit products can still make it to Chinese markets by playing on words, mostly clumsy reworking of famous brand names or logos, or "creative" renaming, that is, labeling 100 percent "made-and created-in-China" goods as foreign products.

As a recent China Central Television report said, building material companies such as "Noble Tiles" and "Marco Polo Tiles" are all Chinese entities, dairy products of "Biostime France" and "Yashily Group" are sold only in China, fashion brands such as Jack &Jones and Selected, which nominally belong to "Danish" distributor Bestseller, are nowhere to be found in Europe.

Worse, nearly 2 million bottles of Chateau Lafite Rothschild are reportedly consumed in China every year, say industry insiders, when the French winemaker produces only about 200,000 bottles a year. In other words, most of the Lafite wine sold in China is fake.

By crowning their products with some exotic names, companies such as "Noble Tiles" intend to attract Chinese consumers who are obsessed with imported brands. Given the increasing brand awareness in China, domestic consumers tend to favor time-tested brands and products from developed countries such as the United States and Germany. And to exploit this "foreign-brand obsession" of domestic consumers, many Chinese companies have assumed and/or given their products seemingly exotic names.

Since blatant copying of foreign brand names, logos or products would be an infringement of intellectual property and/or copyright laws and thus draw heavy fines, such companies either use the names of some foreign celebrities or places as their brands, or register a self-designed trademark under an English or other foreign name to deceive customers into believing they are buying products made by foreign companies.