CRC is less likely than aliexpress, an unknown trader on ebay or amazon, but Crc bought a lot of grey import stuff and were endlessly pushing down on prices for huge orders.
It could be a bit like the tesco burgers that contained horsemeat - you can be sure the buyers thought they were getting what they'd asked for, but continual price pressure encouraged the supplier to find a cheap option.
I'm sure there are fake shimano chains out there, and as a rule if a shimano part doesn't work like you expect, something is amiss.
I've never had a customer say a shimano chain is noisy (from madison, the UK shimano distributor, definitely genuine) although I'll start asking around.