[60 Minutes]: We know that 15 to 20 percent of all goods in China are counterfeit.
Plenty of money’s at stake in this burgeoning economy and market, of course. And cracking down could put people out of work, which could be destabilizing, which is not something the government is fond of.
Trouble is, it’s not just a problem for American companies. Consumers beware. ‘You won’t die from purchasing a pair of counterfeit blue jeans or a counterfeit golf club. You can die from taking counterfeit pharmaceutical products,’ says John Theriault, head of global security for the American pharmaceutical giant, Pfizer. ‘And there’s no doubt that people have died in China from bad medicine.’
We haven’t begun to envision how much the global economy will change this century, IMHO. Here’s one more data point.