Pain and money spent on many inadequate products have prompted me to post this message. In more than a decade, I have shopped for local and foreign brand names in China, and I have watched out for all kinds of fake products. What I have found most difficult is to examine some legit foreign brand names, which are made in the country. My frustration is based on my experiences that they may not be fakes essentially, but they often are substandard to the brand names' quality and/or practices.

As I am active in sports I purchase sporting goods frequently. Most often I look for foreign brand names because I am more familiar with and have larger confidence in them. A month ago, I bought a pair of adidas tennis shoes of the exact same style as half a year ago. However, the more recent pair of shoes has caused me a serious pain in my right foot suggesting another substandard or perhaps a fake product of a foreign brand in the country. Since both pairs of shoes come from seemingly licensed adidas shops that are in large shopping malls, it is harder to believe my more recent tennis shoes are a counterfeit.

So, what are my choices with respect to my most recent purchase of shoes? Send the shoes/complaint and wait or continue on to see whether my painful foot "adjusts" to the right shoe that causes me the nuisance? I dare to speculate that the producer is well aware of customers' choices on mainland China and that the practices are fully in hands of the locals, not foreigners that own the name.

In the end, it's most likely about the large chaotic local market that's manipulated to a great extent, compromising foreign brand names, poor local regulations, and consumers who have limited rights in the country. I can't imagine the amount of products based on fraud this country is producing every day. Where will the world be in, say 20 years, if every nation establishes itself on such practices as China has?

Cheers and beers our sixth sense when shopping in China