Complaints by consumers involving smuggled and fake cosmetics dominate cases being investigated by local authorities responsible for the cosmetics market, according to an employee of China Consumers' Association (CCA).

On October 19, 2004, four economists -- He Fan, Ba Shusong, Zhong Wei and Zhao Xiao -- held a China Beauty Economy Forum and delivered the first academic report on the beauty industry: An Annual Report of China's Beauty Economy. According to the report, the beauty industry is the fifth largest consumer sector after real estate, automobile manufacturing, tourism, and electronic-communications.

Statistics in the report show that the number of complaints involving the beauty and cosmetics industries is the third highest among the above industries, with the incidence of counterfeit goods showing up as a major problem. 

According to experts, the market is flooded with smuggled and counterfeit goods, and consumers aren't able to tell the difference.

On March 15, China celebrated Consumers' Day. At one of the commemorative events, an announcement was made that the hydrargyrum content of a product to remove freckles used by a Nanjing-based beauty parlor, with more than 3,000 shops around the country, exceeded national standards by 27,000 times.

Because beauty products with questionable ingredients are generally used in small amounts, the effects of the substances, some poisonous, are insidious. They therefore slip through the cracks undetected.

The CCA source identified the following issues with monitoring the industry:

?     Many manufacturers don't have proper sanitation permits.

?     Some products don't carry the Customer Information Quality (CIQ) label -- or if they do, they are usually fake.

?     Some products don't carry the date of manufacture or expiry dates.

?     Many products don't have product information leaflets printed in Chinese.

Another way consumers are duped into buying "foreign" or "imported" cosmetics is that dealers buy the products from overseas in bulk, package them in China, and then pass them off as the original imported product. 

According to the CCA, genuine cosmetic products should have the following:

?     A Hygiene Permit for Imported Cosmetics approved by the Ministry of Health;

?     An Imported Cosmetic Chinese Certificate; and

?     Inspection and quarantine certificates for imported cargo issued by the Import & Export Commodities Inspection Bureau.

Products being sold in China would have, in addition, have a quarantine certificate label, a label in Chinese, and a CIQ label.

CCA urges consumers to only buy products with these labels.

According to a report in Legal Daily, industry insiders said that the relevant departments that oversee the beauty industry -- commodities inspection, sanitation and the customs bureaus -- have to work together if they are to effectively manage the situation. Further, consistent regulations and policies have to be drawn up and implemented.

At present, each department works quite independently of the others. The import and export commodities inspection department checks if the goods have passed through the necessary examinations and whether it has a CIQ label; the quality supervising department examines items for potential health and safety risks; the sanitation and epidemic prevention department is responsible for checking whether manufacturing processes have abided by legal sanitation regulations.

(China.org.cn by Zhou Jing, December 6, 2005)