Xinhua News Agency, Shenzhen, January 13th Question: "Overseas purchasing" beauty cosmetics may just have turned around in Huaqiang North. What does the smuggling case of Huaqiang North exceeding 600 million yuan reflect?
Xinhua News Agency "Xinhua Viewpoint" reporters Simomo and Sun Fei
"Overseas purchasing is pulling a suitcase and saying that it is going abroad. It may just be a turn in Huaqiang North." At the end of 2020, a cosmetics smuggling case involving more than 600 million yuan caused an "earthquake" in Shenzhen Huaqiang North. With the intervention of the industry authorities, thousands of beauty shops were closed almost overnight and closed for rectification.
Since 2018, due to the decline of the traditional communication electronics market, many digital cities in Huaqiang North, such as Mingtong, Manha and Yuanwang, have been transformed into beauty cities. The beauty industry has been soaring for a while, and it is hard to find a booth. However, major smuggling cases have brought the chaos in Huaqiang North’s beauty market to the surface.
The gang "swiped the bill" exceeded 600 million yuan, and the transformation of Huaqiang North suffered heavy losses.
These days, Huaqiang North Mingtong, Yuanwang, Women’s World and other beauty cities are deserted, and most shops in the mall are closed. Through the glass window, you can see the scattered packaging bags and sporadic goods in the store. Many merchants posted WeChat QR code and mobile phone number on the window.
"Most of these cosmetics in Huaqiang North are branded goods, but they are smuggled. The price tag is generally much lower than the counter price, and some are even half lower." At the gate of Mingtong Beauty Shop, Dou Hong (a pseudonym), the owner of beauty shop, told Xinhua Viewpoint reporter.
In 2018, Mingtong Digital City successfully transformed into a beauty city. As the first batch of settled merchants, Dou Hong not only enjoyed preferential rents, but more importantly, seized business opportunities and earned the "first bucket of gold" in life.
Soon, Manha Digital Plaza and Longsheng Accessories City quickly followed suit and "transformed" into a beauty city. In just over two years, Huaqiang North has gathered thousands of beauty shops, and the monthly rent for stalls with good locations is 20,000 to 30,000 yuan, but it is still hard to find a file.
With the industrial agglomeration of Huaqiang North Beauty Market, more and more Wechat business and Daigou choose to come here to get their goods directly. "Those overseas purchasing agents in the circle of friends pull suitcases and say that they are going abroad. In fact, they may just go to Huaqiang North." Dou Hong said.
At the end of 2020, the Anti-smuggling Bureau of Shenzhen Customs, together with the public security departments, investigated shops suspected of smuggling in several beauty shops in Huaqiang North, destroyed a smuggling criminal gang that used the cross-border e-commerce platform to "swipe the bill" to smuggle cosmetics and other goods into the country, and arrested 36 suspects, with a case value exceeding 600 million yuan.
"There are customs clearance gangs and cargo owners’ gangs. The cargo owners organize the goods abroad and hand them over to the customs clearance gangs. They use the personal information of citizens bought through illegal channels to create false orders, false payment orders and false logistics orders, and then deceive the customs and transport the goods into China." Yu Xiaopeng, deputy section chief of the investigation department of Shekou Branch of Shenzhen Customs Anti-smuggling Bureau, said.
According to the relevant regulations of China, from January 1, 2019, the annual transaction limit of cross-border e-commerce individuals will be increased from 20,000 yuan to 26,000 yuan. Yu Xiaopeng introduced that smuggling gangs tried to steal consumers’ information and consumption quotas for cross-border e-commerce transactions, and falsely reported goods that should have been imported in the nature of general trade as cross-border e-commerce imports.
Nowadays, hundreds of beauty shops including Mingtong, Manha, Yuanwang and other shopping malls are mostly closed, and the street office has posted many banners in the shopping malls with the words "crack down on smuggling according to law and strengthen market order".
Smuggled cosmetics seized by anti-smuggling personnel of Shenzhen Customs (photo). Xinhua News Agency (Photo courtesy of Shenzhen Customs)
From "shanzhai" to "smuggling", how does Huaqiang North go "negative"?
What Huaqiang North lacks most is its keenness to the market and its adventurous spirit.
After the decline of the traditional communication electronics market, merchants in Huaqiang North have tried to explore various industries, and finally it is "imported" beauty products that form a stable industrial agglomeration effect.
"Shenzhen is backed by customs port trade, and there are many sources of cosmetics. Moreover, cosmetics themselves have higher profit margins, more opaque prices, and the difference between official retail channels is large, which is still consumables." Dou Hong told reporters.
As one of the earliest industrial areas of electronic, communication and electrical products in Shenzhen, the annual sales of tens of thousands of merchants gathered in Huaqiang North in that year exceeded 100 billion yuan, and they went out of well-known enterprises such as Tencent, Han’s Laser and Hainengda, and became innovative places.
However, with the rapid development of the Internet to reduce the asymmetry of price information, the imitation of "cottage" and "high imitation" mobile phones was squeezed out by brand mobile phones, and Huaqiang North also ushered in development pains.
At the beginning of the transformation, many beauty cities in Huaqiang North were positioned as high-end, genuine products and genuine goods, but the emergence of major smuggling cases still revealed that the transformation has a long way to go.
At CC Beauty Shop in Mingtong Beauty City, the smuggled goods seized by the staff of Shenzhen Customs Anti-smuggling Bureau were worth about 2 million yuan. "The goods are all purchased from overseas through smuggling channels at low prices." The owner Li said.
Chinese translation labels, including product name, name of country or region of origin, distributor, importer, agent in China, production batch number and service life, are affixed to the outer packaging of regular imported cosmetics, while smuggled products do not have these.
In addition to smuggled products, fakes are also eyeing the newly emerging beauty market in Huaqiang North. According to some merchants, some fake sellers pretend to be merchants in the professional beauty market to sell goods. After the complaint, it is verified that the other party does not even have a basic berth.
In addition, there are criminals who are eyeing businesses with no exclusive supply and insufficient experience. "After all, it is a new industry, and merchants’ ability to identify goods is not enough. We can only call the police when we find fake goods and report them to the market supervision department for handling. " A merchant said.
Anti-smuggling personnel of Shenzhen Customs seized smuggled cosmetics on the spot (data photos). Xinhua News Agency (Photo courtesy of Shenzhen Customs)
How to take the transition road of Huaqiang North?
The physical store was closed and the online shopping business was also affected. The reporter contacted Zhou Feng (a pseudonym), the owner of a physical store in Huaqiang North Beauty City. He told the reporter, "The regulatory authorities are checking the Chinese standard and cannot deliver the goods these days."
At present, the cosmetics market in China is one of the fastest growing markets in the global cosmetics industry. Among them, foreign beauty brands occupy most of the domestic market, and the huge price difference between domestic and foreign beauty products makes businesses take risks.
Zhou Feng judged that the next closure and rectification will make the management of Huaqiang North’s beauty industry more strict and tend to be standardized. "The return of profit margins to normal will also intensify competition among merchants." He said.
It is understood that in recent years, the Futian District Government of Shenzhen has continuously issued supporting policies to help the transformation and upgrading of Huaqiang North business district from many aspects, such as creating innovation space, training innovation teams, gathering innovative enterprises, and attracting global innovation forces, and the market itself is also doing more active exploration.
Bauhinia City was once a commercial building transformed into a beauty city at the same time as Mingtong Digital City. Due to Mingtong’s obvious oligopoly effect in the beauty market, Bauhinia City has taken a different approach and is ready to build itself into a global food trading center.
Liu Junhai, a professor at the Law School of Renmin University of China, said that Huaqiang North has always had innovative genes, but the industrial transformation and upgrading must be legal and legal, and it should not be allowed to grow wildly. It is necessary to establish the concept of paying equal attention to the rule of law and development, safety and speed, integrity and innovation, fairness and efficiency.
Song Ding, deputy director of the China Urban Economic Expert Committee, said, "Regulators should also play an active role in strengthening intellectual property protection, safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of consumers, and promoting Huaqiang North to embark on the road of high-quality development." Liu Junhai said.
