Copycat Culture

Remember Wonderland, the “creepiest” place on earth? Wonderland was meant to be the biggest amusement park in Asia, about 45 minutes from Beijing, but owing to property disputes construction stopped a decade ago. So today, the rodent-infested wasteland serves only as a reminder—that the Chinese economy isn’t as indomitable as it may seem, but that there is no limit to what it will try to knock off. In this case, they tried to rip off Disneyland.

There isn’t much in the West that they haven’t ripped off in China. It’s known as Copycat Culture, which is a nice way of saying that they couldn’t give a mouse’s ass about intellectual property. They’ve been knocking off watches, phones and all sorts, ever since there were things to knock off. Things like Bon Jovi, for example (see above). Lately, however, the Chinese no longer seem content to mass produce crappy imitations of our crap. They’ve expanded operations to now include entirely fake product lines sold in entirely fake company stores. Last year, an American blogger living in Kunming, a small city in China’s Southwestern Yunnan province, posted photos of “the best ripoff store [she had] ever seen.” It was a fake Apple store, and her photos went viral. People marvelled at the cadre of young employees displaying Apple’s signature blue t-shirts, lanyards, and, presumably, their Genius Bar smugness. So complete was the store’s fakery, that the employees themselves actually thought they were working for Apple.

The ensuing media frenzy led to an investigation by Chinese officials revealing no less than 22 fake Apple stores operating in Kunming alone. Incredibly, of those 22 only two were ordered to close, but even then not for copyright infringement or piracy concerns, but for operating without the proper business permits.

And therein lies the problem. There are no real copyright protections for companies in China. Intellectual Property and Copyright fall under the suspiciously ungrammatical Anti-Unfair Competition Law which protects “well-known” goods with “unique” names, packaging or decorations. Intellectual Property may well be somewhat subjective in any case, but if enforcement requires Chinese authorities to define “well-known” and “unique” companies may as well entrust their IP to the Robert Cops.

What’s worse, producing copycat products isn’t necessarily seen as a bad thing in Chinese culture. According to Yu Hua in his book, China in Ten Words, imitation of products with similar names to famous people or brands is a “weirdly Chinese form of rebellion.” It’s referred to as “Shanzai” in Mandarin, which means “small, mountain village.” For years, Shanzai was used to describe the hideouts of bandits and outlaws. But today, Shanzai means “black market,”  and it accounts for a whopping 8% of China’s GDP. It’s a regular cottage industry in China, and according to Sir James Dyson, it may get the Chinese kicked out of the WTO faster than a roundhouse from Kung Fu Panda (the knockoff Chinese version).

Dyson, billionaire inventor and vacuum magnate, claims in a recent Guardian article that China’s already tenuous reputation among foreign investors is being further aggravated by an unfair patent system: "Under WTO regulations, each country is supposed to treat foreign patent applications with the same speed as local applications. But they are passing Chinese applications in months and taking five years for ours. If we have someone copying our products in China we cannot sue them until our patent is passed.”  Added Dyson, “[The Chinese] are creating an unlevel playing field by taking our technology and selling it all over the world.”

Respecting ideas and intellectual property won’t come easy for China—under the Communist system nobody owned much of anything, let alone ideas. But if China wants to become a real player on the world stage they will have to play nice with their new pals in the WTO. As for the Shanzai, they should take a page from the playbook of the people they so desperately want to imitate: Invent something. It’s as American as our President, who is known in China for endorsing his trusty Blockberry 9500.