China’s annual 3·15 consumer-rights broadcast on state television this year staged a sweeping series of investigations that reached into food factories, medical-beauty shops, education-style franchises, e‑mobility rental networks, private marketing operations and even the data pipelines behind large AI models. The programme named multiple companies and described practices that regulators say pose health, safety and financial risks to ordinary consumers. Several of the enterprises flagged have links to larger, listed groups, raising immediate questions about corporate oversight and investor exposure.
In Chengdu, reporters entered a processing plant that supplies popular “net‑celebrity” chicken‑paw snacks and found a foul, chaotic production line where finished products looked pristine only because the factory applied a deliberate bleaching step. Investigators filmed unsanitary conditions — stagnant, discoloured wastewater, badly soiled equipment and haphazard storage — and documented the use of bleaching agents to produce the bright white colour that sells online. The programme named a cluster of suppliers, including Chengdu Mingyang Food Co. and several other regional producers; one implicated firm in Henan is a subsidiary of an A‑share listed company, drawing immediate attention from markets.
A second strand of reporting targeted the booming cosmetology market for so‑called “exosomes” — biological products widely hyped in anti‑ageing circles but not approved as medicines in China. Investigators found producers operating without proper licences, masking product classifications under existing collagen permits, and promoting unproven therapeutic claims that ranged from joint disease to epilepsy. Some vendors offered “service” packages rather than labelled products, and packaging in several cases bore no regulatory information, fitting the classic “three‑no” (no name, no manufacturer, no standards) profile.
The 3·15 show also took aim at commercialised height‑increase programmes for children, which sell the promise of scientific breakthroughs that contradict basic medical knowledge about growth plates. Chain operators were shown offering guaranteed results, full refunds and franchising models despite lacking clinical data, while managers and sales staff casually admitted the real business model was recruiting customers rather than delivering validated therapies. These operations have expanded rapidly across provinces, exploiting parental anxieties and the premium consumers place on educational and health outcomes.
Other segments documented how private‑domain marketing ecosystems inflate margins on cheap drugs and supplements by repackaging them as high‑value “courses” and selling them through closed social channels at many times their wholesale price. Investigative reporters traced a “GEO” industry that pays to seed content across accounts and then harvests those signals to game AI rankings and search results — effectively paying to bias model outputs and elevate client products when consumers query mainstream generative systems.
Electric bicycle safety and investment scams rounded out the broadcast. Rental operators and some well‑known chains were accused of offering machines that exceed national speed limits and evade post‑standard safety checks. Meanwhile, a “recommendation plus profit‑share” stock advising scheme was exposed as a thinly veiled fraud: clients were steered to trades chosen by company owners, losses were hidden and profits selectively shared, while the advisory firms lacked the required licences.
Taken together, the 3·15 investigations expose a pattern of weak compliance across fragmented supply chains, opaque private marketing ecosystems and nascent digital platforms. The programme had an immediate political and commercial effect: local market‑supervision agencies in Sichuan announced provincewide rectifications of implicated food processors, and some named companies issued rapid, sometimes defensive, responses. For international readers, the episode underscores how consumer safety, platform governance and corporate disclosure are converging as priorities for Chinese regulators and for any investor or partner engaged with mainland supply chains or digital marketplaces.