Driving through Shenzhen , passing countless factories, it's not hard to believe that as many as 110,000 are unlicensed. Some are bigger than aircraft hangars. Many are just a single floor in a decrepit building. However, they almost all share one common trait: they should be flying a black flag with a white skull and crossbones.
According to provincial government estimates, intellectual piracy accounts for at least 80 per cent of the value coming out of unlicensed factories in Shenzhen. The figure is slightly lower for Guangzhou - with 100,000 factories. Both cities are at the top of a hit list compiled by the Quality Brands Protection Committee (QBPC), a grouping of the biggest multinational brands operating in China. Over the past year, the two cities' reputations have gotten no better, despite a number of major, high-profile raids.
If further evidence were needed of how serious the counterfeiting problem is in the Pearl River Delta, it was provided on Monday by the visit to Shenzhen of the US government's 'anti-piracy tsar'. Chris Israel was appointed by US President George W. Bush to the newly created, powerful position of Co-ordinator for International Intellectual Property Enforcement in July. His first trip abroad was to China. His first stop was not Beijing. It was the den of piracy worldwide.
Given the secretive nature of counterfeiting, and the natural desire of victims to inflate projections of how much they've lost, it's hard to put an accurate figure on how big the business is. But that hasn't held the US government back, which claims its companies lost US$250 billion to counterfeiting last year - or the equivalent of 750,000 jobs.
Given Mr Israel's first port of call, there's little doubt where a huge slice of that's coming from. The QBPC is certainly clear: 34 per cent of its 127 members have counterfeiting claims that originate in Guangdong . Such statistics are underlined by case study after case study of multinational - and local - companies operating in the workshop of the world.
Among those attending a forum at the Shenzhen Shangri-La, organised by the American Chamber of Commerce in Guangdong to coincide with Mr Israel's visit, were some of the world's biggest names: Microsoft, Time Warner, the Motion Picture Association, Mattel (Barbie dolls), LVMH (Louis Vuitton bags), Eli Lilly (drugs such as Cialis), and Philips (electronics). They were joined by two of Guangdong's most famous local brands: ZTE, the telecoms-equipment maker, and Tencent, the 'Chinese ICQ', which has the world's biggest online community of 175 million members.