Chinese authorities have discovered more fake Apple stores. The city of Kunming happens to have five of them.
According to the Associated Press, Chinese officials ordered that two of them halt all business while they are under investigation.
Authorities couldn’t do much about the other three stores, which had Apple signs and logos on display. They couldn’t do anything due to the fact that they did not find any counterfeit Apple gear for sale, according to a report by a local newspaper posted on the Kunming city government’s website.
The investigation comes after a blog post last week from an American woman who lives in Kunming in Yunnan province. She discovered three stores pretending to be genuine Apple stores in the city. She snapped photos and uploaded them to her BirdAbroad blog.
She said that they were based on the tech giant’s well-known stores. They even went as far as to mimic the winding staircases and blue T-shirts of the staff.
When the blog went up on Wednesday, the Kunming Trade and Industry Bureau examined over 300 electronics stores in Kunming and discovered five bogus Apple stores, the city government’s website said.
Media calls to the Kunming Trade and Industry Bureau were unanswered Monday.
Apple has four company stores that sell the iPhone and other gadgets in China, two are in Beijing and there are two in Shanghai. There are also many official resellers.
The spread of the fake Apple stores shows the sluggish development China’s government is making fighting a culture that is full of piracy and mass production of fake goods. It is a problem in its relations with trading partners.
As of now there is no fake Chinese version of Steve Jobs.
