A company with zero insured employees drafted an eye care standard, while a disinfectant product disguised as a Japanese import preys on consumer trust.
A "fake Japanese" packaging scheme built on information asymmetry is precisely exploiting modern people's eye-care anxieties. Recently, a "Japan DR SCT" lutein eye-care solution, heavily promoted on the "medicine" channels of major e-commerce platforms, was exposed by the media for what it really is. This cross-border "premium" product, whose packaging is covered in Japanese characters and prominently labeled "製薬" (pharmaceutical), turned out upon delivery to be a purely domestic gray-market operation—not only is it manufactured in Jiangxi, but its underlying classification is merely a low-barrier "消字号" (disinfection product designation), with no connection to pharmaceuticals or medical devices whatsoever.
Behind this deeply ironic consumer scam, a low-cost gray industry chain and regulatory blind spot are coming into view.
Most ordinary consumers, accustomed to ordering based on e-commerce platform recommendations, tend to dismiss such incidents as isolated cases of false advertising by individual merchants. That superficial view severely underestimates the precise regulatory exploitation these professional operators conduct under a veneer of compliance. To understand the underlying profit logic of this "boundary-testing" game, one must trace its core production source through Tianyancha—Jiangxi Fengde Health Industry Co., Ltd.
This company, established in June 2019, has a registered capital of only 100,000 RMB, jointly held by Xie Guozhong and Lu Xuehua. Even more startling is what lies in its annual reports: this factory, which continuously ships "Japanese-style eye-care solution" to consumers nationwide, has shown a "zero employees enrolled in social insurance" status for multiple consecutive years—a hollow shell.
How exactly does a marginal workshop with 100,000 RMB in capital and nominally zero insured employees manage to package a disinfectant as a so-called "special eye drop" that gains entry into e-commerce "medicine" channels?
The answer lies in the legal veneer woven from "enterprise standards" and the "消字号" designation. According to Tianyancha's standard information, Jiangxi Fengde Health Industry Co., Ltd. was deeply involved in drafting several enterprise standards, including "Shouchengtang Pharmaceutical® Lutein Soothing Eye Drops" and "DR.SCT® Lutein Soothing Eye Drops," most of which remain currently active and effective.
This is the coldest unspoken rule in today's down-market health supplement and personal care sector: merchants exploit the policy incentives encouraging corporate innovation and self-filing of enterprise standards, drafting deceptively authoritative-sounding standard names and inserting them into the public archive. These standards then serve as "official qualifications" to pass automated platform audits when opening stores and listing products.
Choosing the "消字号" designation over "药字号" (pharmaceutical designation) or "械字号" (medical device designation) is a carefully calculated financial and time-saving decision. A genuine eye drop requires lengthy clinical trials, rigorous GMP workshop certification, and R&D capital often starting in the millions; a "消字号" disinfectant liquid, by contrast, only requires a simple health safety evaluation filing with local health authorities—batch production can begin within weeks and for as little as a few thousand yuan.
The operators have zeroed in on e-commerce platforms' "medicine" channels, where, in the pursuit of skyrocketing GMV, review standards for health and care products have been loosened. By attaching the enterprise standard name of "eye drops" to a liquid that is essentially only capable of cleaning and disinfecting, and wrapping it in a cheap "Japanese pharmaceutical" package, they complete the leap from "disinfectant water" to "Japanese imported medicine," extracting hundreds of times their cost from short-video and WeChat private-domain channels.
When the tide of traffic recedes, what truly tests an industry's compliance is often the business registration data hidden deep in the capillaries of daily operations. A hollow shell with zero insured employees propping up multiple "active eye-care standards"—this resounding slap is not only aimed at the company involved, but also serves as a long-overdue wake-up call for the entire e-commerce pharmaceutical ecosystem.
In an increasingly discerning consumer cycle, this flash-in-the-pan black industry, which relies solely on information black boxes and shoddy packaging to fleece consumers, will ultimately be squeezed out of its profit haven by the rising tide of cross-departmental scrutiny and transparency in business registration information.