Shenyang's Fake Shopping Mall

China is famous for fakery, including counterfeit pork and mutton from fox, mink and rat meat, which resulted in the arrest of 904 people in May and the seizure of 20,000 tonnes of fake meat. In August, according to the state-owned Xinhua News Service, police prosecuted 19,000 cases involving production and sale of 5,000 tonnes of food and drinks, 2 billion tablets or bottle of drugs, 3,100 tons of seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, and more than 53 million personal care products, machinery and electrical products.

There have been well-publicized cases of entire faked Apple electronics products stores. But the city of Shenyang appears to have gone everybody one better by allowing for the creation of an entire fake shopping mall for luxury goods. Marketing Interactive, a Hong Kong-based marketing trade publication, reported that the strip mall, behind the Wanda Square in Shenyang is lined with European-style boutique stores. But as the pictures below show, all of the shops are fakes, with brand names just a single letter off here and there.

You can source the pictures from either Weibo or from Offbeat China.

{gallery}luxurybrands{/gallery}

The boutique shopping strip, a spokeswoman said, was developed by Wanda, and all the shops "are fakes for marketing purpose only."

The ministry said most of the counterfeit goods-producing factories were located in suburban or remote areas.