Well, no, not really

China flooding Britain with fake stamps in act of ‘economic warfare’

Warfare rather implies a state doing it:

Sources close to Royal Mail said that forgeries from the Communist country were behind a rise in complaints that letters sent with stamps bought from legitimate stores were being flagged as fraudulent.

Seems rather to be standard wise guys spotting an opportunity:

It is understood that the convincing forgeries are being bought unwittingly by small retailers, who are not required to buy stamps directly from Royal Mail and can instead source them from wholesalers in bulk.

That, umm, seems odd. But still, it gives an obvious place to control the issue.

Royal Mail buys a few stamps from each wholesaler, those selling the fakes get dinged good and hard and that would thin the herd, no?

Alan Mendoza, founder of national security think tank the Henry Jackson Society, said the mass production of forged stamps damaged the British economy by “robbing businesses of revenue”.

He said: “It is inconceivable that a large-scale counterfeit operation like this could be occurring without the knowledge and therefore tacit approval of the Chinese Communist Party given its strict control over the Chinese economy. As such, it’s an obvious form of economic warfare and should be called out for what it is with economic repercussions for China if it does not rein it in.”

Ah. Bloke who thinks govt should control economy believes that a govt does control an economy.

And what’s really fun?

The Royal Mail introduced barcode stamps in 2022 in an effort to put a stop to forgeries that were costing the postal service tens of millions of pounds every year.

The barcodes are scanned when post arrives at sorting offices and suspicious stamps are then inspected by staff who then declare if the stamp is genuine or fake. Stamp fraud has since fallen 90pc.