Born to Steal

17 of the most shameless Chinese rip-offs of Western brands
By Will Heilpern

The counterfeit-goods industry in China is enormous.
Four of every 10 products sold online in the country are counterfeit or of "bad quality," according to a 2015 report by the Chinese news agency Xinhua.
Fake goods are not limited to online stores, though.
Entire markets are filled with cut-price fake goods and shop fronts that appear to be rip-offs of American brands like KFC and Walmart.
Most recently, a Chinese sportswear brand called Uncle Martian launched, which carries more than a passing resemblance to Under Armour.
We compiled 17 of the most brazen Chinese copycat brands.
Mamta Badkar and Cooper Smith compiled an earlier version of this report.

1. Under Armour is considering taking legal action against copycat Chinese-sportswear brand Uncle Martian.

A company in China just unveiled a premium sports clothing brand that looks very similar to Under Armour.
Images from Uncle Martian's launch show were shared widely on social media this week when people noticed the blatant similarities between the two sports clothing brands.
The 25-year-old Chinese sports manufacturer Tingfei Long Sporting Goods Co. is behind the new brand, according to Mashable, where we first spotted the story.
Uncle Martian is not even trying to hide the similarities between the two sports clothing brands.
On Weibo, a Chinese social-media site, Uncle Martian shared a post that included a photo of the Under Armour logo alongside images from the launch.
Under Armour sent Business Insider this statement on Saturday: "Under Armour is aware of the Uncle Martian launch event. Uncle Martian’s uses of Under Armour’s famous logo, name, and other intellectual property are a serious concern and blatant infringement. Under Armour will vigorously pursue all business and legal courses of action."
China has copyright laws that are fairly similar to those of Western countries.
It has been a part of the World Trade Organization since 2001, which requires it to establish significant intellectual property law.
The problem is that these copyright laws are difficult to enforce in China, according to the China Business Review.
See if you can tell the difference:
Under Armour/Uncle Martian
Check out the Uncle Martian model on the catwalk:



2. HiPhone has been copying Apple's iPhone for years. The HiPhone 6 looks very realistic on the outside, though it runs an Android operating system.


3. The Onda Air bares a close resemblance to the iPad Air. It runs Android and Windows.


4. It isn't just fake Apple devices that have been ripped off. There have been entire fake Apple stores, too.


5. The Landwind Suv looks a lot like a Range Rover ...

Call the lawyers! China's worst knock-off designs from the Shanghai motor show http://www.carmagazine.co.uk/features/car-culture/its-a-knock-off-chinas-copycat-cars-at-the-2015-shanghai-motor-show/ …

6... while the Geely GE looks like a Rolls-Royce Phantom.


7. Shijingshan Amusement Park in Beijing blatantly apes Walt Disney's Disneyland. The park's management described its copy of Cinderella as looking like "a Chinese country girl," according to The Associated Press.


8. Walmart has clearly been the inspiration for Wumart. A representative for the Chinese supermarket said candidly, "We dream about being the Walmart of China," according to The Economist.


9. Tired of finding Starbucks in every town you visit? Try out Sunbucks in Shanghai.


10. One of the many Chinese rip-offs of KFC was Beijing's Obama Fried Chicken. But the shop took down the sign in 2011 after facing pressure from local authorities.


11. Pizza Hut is mimicked by Pizza Huh.


12. Unsurprisingly, McDonald's has not escaped the copycat treatment. This Chinese example is actually one of the most subtle.


13. China managed a mash-up rip-off of "Harry Potter" and "The Lord of the Rings" in the same book. It translates as "Harry Potter and the Leopard Walk-Up-To Dragon."


14. There is a striking similarity between Borios and Oreos.


15. Cerono Extra looks incredibly similar to Mexican beer brand Corona's products.


16. Olay shampoo is replicated by Okay.


17. This copy of Wrigley's gum is incredibly difficult to pronounce.

Nation of Thieves

China’s theft of U.S. trade secrets under scrutiny
By Mara Hvistendahl

Counterfeit drugs seized at John F. Kennedy International Airport in 2012. A new report estimates that counterfeiting, stolen trade secrets, and pirated software cost the United States as much as $600 billion a year.

When it comes to intellectual property (IP) theft, there’s the rest of the world, and then there’s China, a new report says. 

In 2015, mainland China and Hong Kong accounted for 87% of counterfeit goods seized by the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. 

China’s share of trade secrets theft, though harder to track, is not far behind, claims the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property in Washington, D.C., a bipartisan nongovernmental group co-chaired by former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman Jr., who served as U.S. ambassador to China from 2009 to 2011.
Stolen trade secrets, pirated software, and counterfeiting cost the United States between $225 billion and $600 billion per year, the commission estimates. 

The report singled out as suspect China’s targeting of biotechnology and quantum communications technology. 

“The massive theft of American IP threatens our nation’s security as well as vitality,” said former Director of National Intelligence Admiral Dennis Blair, co-chair of the commission, in a press release.
Scholars often take issue with efforts to put a price tag on IP theft. 

In court, for example, companies frequently cite as losses the amount spent researching a product or idea. 

But by the time a product comes to market, that figure may be a poor reflection of its true value. 

“The industry standard for competitive edge in IP is in some cases just a couple of years,” says Greg Austin, a cybersecurity expert at the EastWest Institute in New York City and author of Cyber Policy in China. 

Also up for debate is how best to address IP theft. 

The Obama administration pursued a strategy heavy on prosecutions of Chinese-born U.S. scientists (see here, here, and here), along with symbolic moves against overseas offenders, such as the 2014 indictment of five members of a People’s Liberation Army hacking unit. 

Policy tools improved under Obama went “largely unused,” the report said. 

For instance, a 2015 law enabling the president to sanction foreign countries, companies, and individuals for IP theft has not yet been invoked.
The commission urges the Trump administration to “make IP theft a core issue.” 

Among the policy prescriptions outlined are expanding the number of green cards available to science students—to discourage Chinese U.S.-educated scientists from returning to their home countries and contributing to their development—and ensuring that “top U.S. officials from all agencies” push China “toward becoming a self-innovating country.”
Derek Scissors, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., who commented on a draft of the report but was not involved with writing it, says those recommendations could have been more targeted: “First, start sanctioning companies that receive stolen IP. Change their risk calculations. When that’s in place, what else is truly required will become clearer.”

Nation of Thieves

Chinese counterfeiters and hackers cost US up to $600 billion a year

By Paul Wiseman

Counterfeit goods, software piracy and the theft of trade secrets cost the American economy as much as $600 billion a year, a private watchdog says.
In a report out Monday, the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property says the annual losses range from about $225 billion to $600 billion. 

The theft of trade secrets alone costs the United States between $180 billion and $540 billion annually. 

Counterfeit goods cost the United States $29 billion to $41 billion annual; pirated software costs an additional $18 billion a year.
The findings echo those of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which in 2015 pegged the annual cost of economic espionage by computer hacking at $400 billion.
The commission labels China the world's No. 1 culprit. 

China accounts for 87 percent of counterfeit goods seized entering the United States. 

The report says the Chinese government encourages intellectual property theft.
The commission is led by former Republican presidential candidate and Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who also served as U.S. ambassador to China, and Adm. Dennis Blair, a former director of U.S. national intelligence.
"The vast, illicit transfer of American innovation is one of the most significant economic issues impacting U.S. competitiveness that the nation has not fully addressed," Huntsman said. 

"It looks to be, must be, a top priority of the new administration."

Empire of Fakes

Alibaba's counterfeit woes won't stop any time soon
By Adam Minter

It's hardly a happy new year for Alibaba Group Holding. 

Just before Christmas, the US Trade Representative added Alibaba's Taobao e-commerce site to a list of "notorious markets" that traffic in counterfeits.
That's an unseemly place for a publicly held company: Other members include a Chinese shopping mall that specialises in counterfeit leather goods and a Paraguayan border market rife with organised crime that hawks everything from fake Ray-Bans to knockoff DVDs.

Spot a fake: Ray Gordon, manufacturing director at Decor, with a real Decor product.

Alibaba isn't keen to be associated with this motley group. 

But like Amazon.com, eBay and other online marketplaces dependent on Chinese manufacturers, it has struggled to maintain its integrity against an onslaught of counterfeiters. 

Without an aggressive crackdown by China's government, these marketplaces won't stand much of a chance against the fakes.
By many measures, counterfeiting is one of China's leading industrial sectors. 

A study by the US Chamber of Commerce found that it brings in about $US396 ($543) billion annually, representing some 12 per cent of China's total exports and 1.5 per cent of its gross domestic product. 

Last year, when just one Chinese province decided to crack down, it shut 417 "manufacturing and sales locations" with stock worth more than $US200 million.
This large-scale criminal enterprise has surprisingly staid origins. 

The global outsourcing boom that started in the 1980s brought foreign factories and expertise to China. 

Workers at those factories excelled at making iPhones and other consumer goods, but also learnt how to knock them off.
These days, it's not unusual for a new product to face counterfeit competition in China within days of its release – or, in the case of the iPhone 6s, days before its release. 

In some instances, as with last year's hoverboard craze, the knock-offs proliferate so quickly that the original patent and brand owners are forgotten in favour of generic "made in China" versions.
This parallel economy is no secret. 

Last year, Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma bluntly told a gathering of retailers that counterfeiters use exactly the same factories and raw materials as legitimate manufacturers. 

Local governments tend to look the other way – or worse. 

A 2009 diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks reported that China's economic downturn at the time was weakening efforts to enforce intellectual-property protections. 

In one passage, it described how Apple's effort to shut down a MacBook counterfeiting line was rebuffed because it would threaten "100 local jobs."
That's pretty sizeable for a knockoff operation. 

I've visited counterfeit iPhone "manufacturers" in Shenzhen that consisted of only a handful of family members. 

They would expertly assemble parts into reasonable facsimiles for sale via online marketplaces such as eBay, Lazada and Taobao. 

Though none of these marketplaces welcome counterfeiters, they do welcome small Chinese manufacturers – and distinguishing between the two is often difficult.
Amazon, for instance, has tried to fight off a growing problem with fakes, but in doing so has risked disqualifying legitimate small retailers, who use the site to sell everything from paper clips to pillow covers directly to consumers worldwide. 

Such entrepreneurs reduce costs for customers and constitute an important and fast-growing segment of Amazon's online marketplace.
As a China-based company, Alibaba has greater exposure to counterfeiting than Amazon does, given that Chinese are generally quite price-sensitive and less averse to purchasing fakes. 

But it isn't helpless. 

For one thing, it could simplify its procedures for brand owners to report instances of counterfeiting. It could also use its global profile and political leverage to push the government to prosecute more counterfeiters.
Although that might be risky for Alibaba, the alternative is to resign itself to a reputation befitting a notorious flea market – not one of the world's most influential e-commerce companies. 

Given the choice, Alibaba shouldn't hesitate to prove it is a little better than the counterfeiters.

Mapoleon, Emperor of the Fakes

It's time to stop Chinese theft

• According to a 2015 estimate, China steals some $360 billion annually from American companies through hacking
• Trump must implement policies that deter cyberattacks and penalize Chinese companies for their theft

By Claudia Tenney
According to Claudia Tenney -- a Republican Congresswoman for New York's 22nd Congressional District -- Trump must implement policies that deter cyberattacks and penalize Chinese companies for their theft

China's Dirty Five

By selecting Iowa Governor Terry Branstad as US Ambassador to China, President Donald Trump chose a man who Xi Jinping considers a "friend." 

But as a friend, Branstad will be the messenger to deliver the hard truth that the days of America bowing and scraping at China's feet are over.
To start, Trump and Branstad should put a quick end to China's economic espionage and outright theft. 

And make no mistake: China is stealing from the U.S. economy on a staggering scale.

Bill Evanina, a top deputy to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, estimated last year that the Chinese steal about $360 billion annually from American companies through hacking alone. 

That is more than three times the value of all US exports to China in 2015 -- and roughly equal to the entire trade imbalance between the United States and China. 

In fact, it is more than three quarters the value of US exports to all of Asia.
Add in how much intellectual property the Chinese steal the old-fashioned way, with spies embedded in American companies, and the figure climbs by many more billions of dollars per year. 

Half of the 165 private companies surveyed by the FBI were victims of economic espionage or theft of trade secrets. 

Those companies suspect that China was to blame for 95% of the attacks. 

And the problem is only getting worse, with industrial spying and sabotage up 53% in 2015 over 2014.
Then there's China's huge industry of counterfeit goods like knock-off watches, handbags, DVDs and smartphones. 

That costs foreign companies, many of them American, another $20 billion every year.
So in many ways when Trump says that China is "killing us" on trade, he's right.
Trump's rhetoric has been criticized as anti-free trade. 

But free-market economists champion property rights, and conservatives and classical liberals view protecting those rights as one of the primary purposes of government. 

In this sense, Trump's promise to stop the theft is more free-market than the approach of his do-nothing skeptics.
There's nothing virtuous about a government that is passive when foreign entities, linked to militaries and sovereign states, steal from private businesses.
Of course, as the President points out, when we talk about the theft of intellectual property, we are also talking about the theft of American jobs -- not just high-skilled jobs, like designers of the iPhone or developers of solar technology, but also the millions of low-skilled jobs that intellectual property supports. 

Indeed, intellectual property theft deprives low-skilled workers of some of their best employment opportunities.
According to one recent study, industries that rely on intellectual property pay low-skilled workers 40% more than industries that are not reliant on I.P., and hire them even during economic downturns. The Department of Commerce estimates that 45 million American workers -- almost one in three US jobs -- rely on intellectual property protections.
Chinese intellectual property theft also robs American companies of the incentive to innovate. 

For example, the last of the great American steel manufacturers, U.S. Steel, announced in April that it had discovered Chinese-backed hackers stole decades' worth of research on advanced steel-production technologies and turned those discoveries over to Chinese competitors. 

This raises the question: why pour millions into developing technologies only to have the Chinese steal them and undercut your prices?
Worse yet, much more of this theft is unreported and largely unknown to the authorities, let alone to the public, because embarrassed and victimized companies have little recourse and only see downsides to revealing that they were robbed by the Chinese.
The US government must act to protect American jobs, innovation and national security against these abuses. 

A good start would be to send a clear signal that there will be real consequences for any entity, state-backed or otherwise, that steals from American companies.
In Trump's cybersecurity speech during the campaign, he outlined a plan to deter potential aggressors with just such a signal. 

The United States, Trump said, "must possess the unquestioned capacity to launch crippling counter-attacks."
"America's dominance in this arena must be unquestioned," he continued. 

"Cybersecurity is not only a question of developing defensive technologies but offensive technologies as well."
Degrading and disrupting our attackers' offensive capabilities would show that there's a cost to attacking American businesses.
We can respond to attacks by imposing serious consequences outside cyberspace as well. 

For instance, the US Treasury and the Department of Commerce should sanction recipients of stolen intellectual property. 

The International Trade Commission is considering such sanctions in the U.S. Steel case, but offenders should be banned from doing business with American companies and be prohibited from importing products to America until they can prove they have reformed.
Another smart proposal comes from the American Enterprise Institute's recent report on cyberspace strategy, which suggests that we impose penalties when the Chinese blackmail American companies into turning over intellectual property.
Beijing must learn that the United States will defend American jobs and businesses from outright theft through cyberattack and industrial espionage, and Donald Trump appears committed to communicating that message as president.
The damage such crime does to the US economy is real, and Trump is right to focus on it. 

In a world where our second-largest trading partner is stealing from us more than it buys from us, we must be a lot tougher than scolding it for stepping out of line.