CHINA'S HARD-DRIVES CHURNS

CHINESE police have seized more than 210,000 hard drives produced by counterfeit ring that sold them as brand-name items from-

From the likes of  Hewlett Packard Enterprise and IBM, the Xinhua news agency reported on Saturday.

China has vowed to get tough on counterfeiting and intellectual property theft but many brands still face the problem with a broad range of items from cosmetics to vehicles being copied.

The theft of  intellectual property is a  major source of friction in a trade dispute with the United States.

Police arrested  56 suspects  of two factories and four offices in the cities of Nanjing, Beijing, Chongqing and Guangzhou, where the hard drives were made and sold, Xinhua said.

Xinhua said the action against the counterfeiters was carried out late last year.

It did not say why the news was only announced on Saturday but it comes shortly after  U.S. President Donald Trump ordered his trade chief to begin the process of  imposing tariffs on all imports from China.

The investigation into the  fake hard drives began after Hewlett Packard filed a complaint, Nanjing police  were reported as saying.

HP did not immediately respond to requests for comment outside business hours.

The suspects would buy cheap. old and discarded hard drives abroad, modify the data on them, repackage them and sell them at a 65% profit, the police said. [Agencies]