Evil Spirits

“Everything here is poisonous. The air, the water – even the food is poisonous,” an elderly rickshaw driver complains gruffly, whilst sitting in his vehicle parked by Beijing’s Houhai lake. Unfortunately, this LaoBeijinger has missed one lethal item from his list of toxic hazards: fake alcohol. Bogus booze has developed into an endemic problem across China. In fact, The Guardian notes that “Brown-Forman, the company that makes Jack Daniel’s, estimates that around 30% of all alcohol in China is fake.” Similarly, the World Health Organization’s Global Status Report reports that that China’s per capita counterfeit liquor  consumption stood at 8.8 litres in 2012. Over the past three years, there has been a series of crackdowns by the Chinese police on rings dealing in the illicit activity. Each bust unmasks a dramatic insight into the sheer magnitude of the fake alcohol business. A bust in December 2012 discovered 37,000 bottles of counterfeit booze–all apparently intended to be sold at Sanlitun, Beijing’s infamous nightlife district. Despite these efforts by the police, there remains concern that China’s fake alcohol problem will not run dry anytime soon. In China, most counterfeit alcohol comes in two forms. The first is cheap liquor which is sneakily poured into the bottles of high-end, well known brands and then passed off as the real deal. The second version […]