Dark side of the biz-tech marriage shadows consumers

Last week, the usually perky young woman staffer at a cafe that I frequent looked crestfallen. Four of the 100-yuan notes she withdrew from an ATM turned out to be fakes.

I've heard of several such incidents not just in China but even in my home country India.

More than 2 billion citizens of the two nations face a dire risk of picking up counterfeit notes in their everyday transactions as business and technology feed off each other. It's mostly middle-class consumers or relatively low-wage earners who bear the brunt.