It is the latest must-have fashion accessory in Beijing, where every girl wants an Anya Hindmarch “I’m not a Plastic Bag” bag. The trouble is that the authorities have banned it from sale after chaotic scenes in Hong Kong, where several women were trampled in the rush to lay their hands on one of only 1,300 that went on sale.

Yet fashion-conscious Chinese are confident that they can obtain a bag and have no qualms that it will almost certainly be fake. Yesterday taobao.com, the internet auction site, was plastered with advertisements for the bleached cotton, ecologically friendly shopper.

The sellers openly describe the bags as “A products” — a codeword for counterfeit goods. But this appears to prove no deterrent to trendsetters.

Zheng Lu, 24, lives in Beijing and is eager to buy a bag as soon as it becomes available. She will not have to wait long, for China’s massive counterfeit industry is already busy copying the genuine article, which went on sale in Hong Kong last week. She said: “Although this bag is an advocate for the environment, I think what comes first is fashion. A lot of Hollywood stars are using it and the price is cheap.” She regretted that the chaos in Hong Kong had resulted in a decision not to sell the bag in China, where two billion plastics bags are used every day: “Now I’ll buy the fake online, even though this ‘A product’ is more expensive than the original.”

Qin Xiao, a dealer based in Beijing, expects to have counterfeit bags in his store by the weekend. He will have 996 to sell at 139 yuan (£9) each — compared with the £5 price tag in London. He has already handled a large number of calls and has appointments with girls from Beijing and other cities that want to be in the frontline of fashion by Saturday.

He told The Times: “These bags are exactly the same as the real one: the weight, size and fabric. Everything is the same. Anyway, the real ones are made in China too.”

This will be Mr Qin’s second batch, but his first for the domestic retail market. He exported his first order — also all counterfeits — including sales to Britain. The quality of the counterfeits is driving up the price of the genuine article. The real thing is on sale on online auctions for at least 400 yuan in China, to differentiate it from its fake counterpart. Some Chinese sellers are offering a real “I’m not a Plastic Bag” online for as much as 3,250 yuan.

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