The copying culture of China

If you have not learnt this before your first exam, you will learn it when you get the exam back as a little dot here or a small hook there can make the entire character mean something totally different, which in turn can mean that you fail your exam. To illustrate this, see the difference between bei 贝, which means shellfish or cowrie, and jian 见, which means see or meet.

Hence, if you want to master your Chinese, you will have to practice writing by copying characters every day for many years. If you want to become a good calligraphist you need to do the same thing and in the Chinese bookstores you find books of calligraphy that you can copy until you write as beautifully as the master who wrote them originally. Good writing of calligraphy shows sophistication. Traditionally, if you wanted to become a good calligraphist and painter, only when you could copy the master’s bamboo stalks as beautifully as the master draw them were you allowed to draw your own bamboo stalks. (And painting bamboo stalks is difficult, trust me!)

With this in mind it is perhaps not strange to find a strong element of copying in the Chinese culture. As everybody who has visited China knows, the country is raft of pirate copies, some really bad and others so good that even the experts have difficulties distinguishing them from the real thing. It might seem harmless to buy a “Chinese Goose” jacket or a fake Gucci purse, but is not so harmless to the companies that have their brands infringed as they lose sales and get a tainted brand.

In the new Five Year Plan, China is set to become a country of innovation, which means that intellectual property rights (IPR) are becoming more important to protect Chinese innovations. Today, everything that is marketable seems to be copied, both foreign and domestic brands, from chocolate to medicines and cars, sometimes with lethal results. The last few months, Chinese media has stated that, in line with the 12^th Five Year Plan, protecting IPR is high on the government’s agenda, which shows the country’s determination to become a center for innovation.

One interesting trend in the copying culture in China is the shanzhai (山寨) culture. Shanzhai originally means mountain village, and refers to small factories in the Chinese mountains that produce pirate copies. But today the shanzhai copies have evolved and are not only Sung Ericssun mobile phones or dodgy Crocopolo watches (a mix of Crocodile, a copy of Lacoste, and Polo/Ralph Lauren) but rather improved pirate copies. For example, a shanzhai ipad use Windows or Android systems and has more USB connections compared to the real ipad. Or the product “Apple peel” which is something you put on your ipod touch with a SIM-card and voilà you have your own, cheap, iphone.

As I attended the Stockholm Innovation Growth Day a couple of weeks ago, I was impressed with Swedish innovators and their brilliant ideas. But I could not help thinking about China’s road to innovation and the shanzhai copies. Because what I find the most interesting about the shanzhai copies is the innovation lust, similar to the Swedish innovators, which seem to be inherent in these copies. Why stick with just the original when you can actually improve it? Given the fact that only when you can copy the master’s bamboo exactly as beautifully as the master draws it you are allowed to paint your own bamboo, the outside world should keep its eyes on China and its road to becoming the number one country of innovation. Perhaps China has now reached the stage where it is copying so well that it can yet again become the true innovator it once upon a time was inventing the art of printing and the gun powder?