Russian exporters fight to win back Chinese buyers amid fallout over fake goods

At a two-day trade exhibition in Hong Kong earlier this week, Vera Nikitina, a representative of Russian confectionery producer Belyov Pastila Manufacture, was looking for new buyers – while also trying to reassure them that the company’s products were genuinely made in Russia.

The company made its first attempt to enter China in 2019, before beginning regular shipments and establishing a local office in 2022-23. Its sales grew in 2024 amid booming Chinese demand for Russian consumer goods.

That year, Russian consumer goods became somewhat of a retail craze in China, as blue and white so-called Russian goods halls packed with chocolates, sausages, bread and bottles of vodka began popping up in shopping streets and malls across the country, often playing Russian music and displaying Cyrillic signs to draw in shoppers.

The boom, however, did not last long. The company’s sales began to deteriorate the following year after Chinese media exposed how locally made products were being marketed as Russian imports, Nikitina said.

“After Russian consumer goods became increasingly popular, many locally made products began appearing on the market under the guise of Russian imports,” she said.

“This made Chinese consumers more sceptical of Russian products in general and ultimately hurt our business.”

We were not the ones selling fake Russian products. But we are the ones paying the price

Vera Nikitina, Belyov Pastila Manufacture

The company has since opened accounts on Chinese social media platforms in an effort to reintroduce its brand and demonstrate the origin of its products.

“We were not the ones selling fake Russian products,” Nikitina said. “But we are the ones paying the price.”

The influx of Russian goods followed a broader realignment in trade, after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 prompted Western sanctions and the departure of many international brands from Russia.

Trade between China and Russia subsequently expanded in both directions, with Chinese cars and other products filling gaps in the Russian market, and Russian food and consumer goods gained visibility in China.

Bilateral trade reached a record US$244.8 billion in 2024. By the second half of that year, Douyin live streams and other online channels were promoting Russian products ranging from confectionery, sausages, honey and alcohol.

Registrations of businesses associated with Russian goods rose by more than 20 per cent to 841 by the end of 2024, according to corporate database Qichacha.

By early 2025, more than 3,500 such businesses were registered nationwide, although the figure covered related companies rather than shops alone.

The boom soon attracted scrutiny. Media investigations and regulatory inspections beginning in late 2024 found that some stores were using Russian imagery to sell goods made in China or third countries, triggering a consumer backlash that also damaged confidence in genuine imports.

Less than a year after such stores began spreading across Chinese cities, many were shutting their doors. Multiple outlets in Hangzhou had closed and others were holding clearance sales by July, according to a report by Sichuan Online last year.

Evgeny Bazhov, the Russian Export Centre’s chief representative in China, acknowledged that the rapid expansion of loosely branded Russian goods stores had confused consumers and harmed legitimate exporters.

“The Russian image was sometimes used as a marketing concept, while the actual origin of individual products was not always clear,” Bazhov said. “This inevitably creates confusion for consumers and can affect genuine Russian producers as well.”

The centre was responding by working with verified exporters and importers, strengthening official Made in Russia sales channels and developing platforms through which consumers could check the origin of products, he said.

But rebuilding trust would depend on transparent sourcing and reliable distribution rather than marketing alone, Bazhov added.

“Simply being ‘Russian’ is no longer enough,” he said. “Made in Russia should become a quality and traceability proposition, not just a national image.”

The confusion extended beyond questions about where products were made. Kiro, a representative of the Russian vodka brand Legend of Kremlin, said buyers at Chinese trade fairs frequently asked whether Russians normally drank vodka containing 60, 70 or even more than 80 per cent alcohol – far above the traditional 40 per cent strength of Russian vodka.

“When I hear this, I have to explain that a so-called Russian spirit with such a high alcohol content is almost certainly a locally produced Chinese drink being presented as imported Russian vodka,” he said.

Such products had not only distorted buyers’ understanding of Russian spirits, Kiro said, but also undermined trust in genuine imports.

“It is indeed a significant reputational blow for authentic Russian products, which is why organisations like the Russian Export Centre are actively taking measures to combat the appearance of counterfeit Russian goods on Chinese store shelves.”