BEIJING — Sex-shop owner Wang Yunsu wondered how so many competitors could suddenly undercut her low prophylactic prices.
Now she thinks she knows: The other condoms are counterfeit.
“Some manufacturers are cutting corners,” she said, stocking a shelf with a domestic brand whose name translates as Forever Love. “And it’s all about profit.”
It is China’s latest knockoff scandal — inferior contraceptives that health officials say provide little protection and might in fact spread infectious diseases, tarnishing the axiom that condoms mean safe sex.
In November, investigators in Hunan province provided details about a July raid on an underground workshop where they found laborers lubricating condoms with vegetable oil in unsterile conditions, passing off the counterfeits as high- quality-brand products.
It wasn’t the first such bust. In 2008, police raided an illicit factory in Zhejiang province, seizing half a million knockoff condoms. In another case, workers recycled used condoms into hair bands in southern China.
The practice poses yet another disease threat in the world’s most-populous nation.
