More than 20,000kg of fake beef has been seized by police in Xi'an, Shaanxi province, with six meat workshops shut down.
The meat was actually pork and had been treated with chemicals including paraffin wax and industrial salts so it looks like beef.
According to Shanghailist, more than 1,500kg of the meat had been sold to local markets.
Six workshops producting the fake beef have been shut down and the meat seized as evidence.
This follows the horsemeat scandal which errupted in Europe earlier this year, where brands including beef producer JBS; supermarket chain Tesco; and frozen food company, Findus, were all forced to pull their products from shelves.
A French meat processing company, Spanghero, was at the centre of the controversy, accused of passing off 750 tonnes of horsemeat as beef.