Singapore’s primary Chinese language newspaper Lianhe Zaobao recently reported that the U.S. authorities have caught and fined multiple Chinese exporters because they were found to have forged Country of Origin labels. These Chinese exporters shipped goods to Cambodia where they forged “Made in Vietnam” labels in the Cambodia Sihanoukville Special Economic Zone. This is in line with an earlier report that Vietnamese Customs discovered several cases of illegal labels designed to bypass the new U.S. tariffs. The U.S. Embassy confirmed this incident. The Sihanoukville Special Economic Zone is located 210 kilometers west of the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh. It’s an economic development zone that Cambodia and China constructed jointly. It is one of the symbolic projects of China’s One Belt One Road initiative. According to the World Bank Group, the Cambodian economy saw a 7.5 percent increase in 2018 due to the strong growth of exports to the United States.
Source: Lianhe Zaobao, June 20, 2019
https://beltandroad.zaobao.com/beltandroad/news/story20190620-965996