There was one year when the American licensee for Pokemon was using eBay VERO to shut down people that were buying Pokemon toys in Japan and bringing them home in their luggage. Right now, I wouldn’t try to bring even authentic Star Wars toys in from China.

I have lived and worked in China in the manufacturing sector as a QA manager for a multinational company. it is a corrupt place and anything that can be copied will be copied except inferior (cheaper) materials substituted. From the Chinese standpoint, this is not seen as IP theft or unethical in any way. If you contact someone on Alibaba, they may tell you that their product is authentic and licensed and they may genuinely believe this because they don’t understand the difference between licensed and unlicensed or branded and copied.

The licensing issue is another thing altogether. While most licensed products are produced in China, the producer is responsible for monitoring and reporting all of the units sold to the licensor. Take Disney as an example, if anyone thinks that these Chinese companies link with Disney’s licensing software and pay their royalties, they are smoking something.