Cigarette counterfeiters have borne the brunt of recent Chinese government efforts to curb the country's rampant trade in fake goods. However, Beijing's recent efforts to rationalise and modernise the country's cigarette industry - by some measures, the world's largest - have unwittingly aided the counterfeiters.rnEquipment from outmoded factories has wound up in the hands of counterfeiters, according to Wang Hong, director of foreign affairs at the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration (STMA), a government body responsible for enforcing policy in China's state-dominated tobacco industry. The STMA, says Wang, estimates that 90bn of 1.8tn cigarettes produced locally in 2006 were fake. Customs and other law enforcement authorities seized nine billion counterfeit cigarettes in China last year.
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