Shanzhai

This article focuses on the broad spread of shanzhai culture in 2008, exploring the central question: what is it that brings such disparate phenomena together under one label? Shanzhai things have typically emerged from new spaces for participation in production beyond the control of formerly monopolistic authorities. But things are not necessarily shanzhai by birth, for it is also an identity affixed to things by consumers. The shanzhai identity's inherent ambiguity—almost the same but not quite—brings with it a dimension of disruption of authority (cf. Bhabha), but its political standpoints are elusive. Using insights from hybridity theory, this article characterizes shanzhai as a contemporary successor to what Lu Xun termed Grabism: the active reappropriation of economic and cultural authority for diverse local purposes, which have themselves been shaped and redefined by those same authorities.

Among the many historical examples in which the Orient has been imaginatively associated with magic, one of the most fascinating involves an actual overlap between race and magic in the popular performances of yellowface magicians at the turn of the twentieth century. I use this example to show and analyze some of the dynamics between magic and the aesthetics of race, especially as these play out through one of the most influential and long-standing contradictions of the “Yellow Peril”: Chinese people are unassimilable, yet Chinese aesthetics are easily appropriated.

The appropriation and use of copyrighted content in China, both within and outside China, is the subject of populist rhetoric and with widely differing commonplaces. Under these circumstances the present industry report aims to better classify the making of intellectual property in China with its unique characteristics. To this end, the study proposes to examine the Shanzhai phenomenon in terms of its definition, its varieties, the associated readings. In addition, it tries to depict the innovation process of Chinese companies in its international context as contribution to a better understanding of the intellectual property in China in a historical perspective.

This study examines a copycat culture called Shanzhai, particularly looking into fashion imitations made and circulated by a group of women designers through digital media. It investigates the cultural transformation of labor taking place in China through the critical lens of precarious creativity. Women designers perform digital labor to de-fetishize the labor process of global fashion brands, which mythicizes class and commodity. These women’s fashion work lacks official recognition as meaningful labor, rendering them vulnerable to being policed, condemned, and regulated, while their ability to make a case for the legitimacy of their work is further diminished when the state co-opts Shanzhai to fit it into its nation-building narratives. These women’s experiences of precarity and their very act of copying reveal the simultaneous possibility and impossibility of the Chinese Dream.

Lots of speculations
are ongoing now about how the maker movement will transform the manufacturing industry. One solid
lead have been coming last week from China when different members of the Politburo suddenly pay
visits to different hackerspaces 2 to announce their will to upgrade the “made in China” manufacturing
sector into a gigantic fablab. Famous figures from the US tech community have already coined
Shenzhen an “heaven for makers” before. Their call have been heard in Beijing who is now claiming
its status of leader on the global stage of the next “industrial revolution”. Makers worldwide, starving
for recognition, will surely welcome this incredible resource brought at their disposal. Still one big
problem though : how to turn the grim reality of manufacturing in China into something trendy and
fashionable ? What will make the scary dark suits of the Beijingers look good next to the flashy
shorties of the Californians ? A simple selfie stick actually provide us a very unique viewpoint on the
thrilling, glamorous and very scary encounter of the maker movement and the Chinese Communist
Party.

Shanghai's Pudong financial district is known for its spectacular skyline, which Michelle Huang has referred to as 'a copy of a global city' – a reading that this article pushes further. What does this 'copy of a global city' tell us about the intricate relationships between globalisation, capitalism and urbanity? Whereas Koolhaas proposed the notion of the 'generic city' to grasp the future Asian city, this article argues that his reading reifies the conservative premise that globalisation equals homogenisation. Although Abbas' concept of the 'fake' comes closer to what we see emerging in Asia, it simultaneously reifies the problematic idea of an authentic original. Instead, the article proposes reading Pudong as a shanzhai version of the global city: meaning the culture of Chinese pirated, 'fake' products. By linking the notion of shanzhai to that of the global city, it aims to recuperate the locality, fluidity and peculiarity of the global city.

Shanzhai has come to refer to all Chinese counterfeit products and to the attitude of their producers towards authority. One argument that explains the popularity of shanzhai products in China is that the average consumer could not afford original name brands, and that by acquiring a cheaper version, one could find out whether it was worthwhile to own an original. While shanzhai has turned into a phrase and concept that many in the West are familiar with, many Chinese are not, or no longer; most do not care whether the goods they consume are ‘authentic’ or not. Other Chinese are embarrassed by the frequent use of the concept in combination with the signifier ‘China’.

Book Section (from The Pirate Book)

For decades corporate economists have provided half-baked
proofs to support the claim that infringements of intellectual
property rights lead to large losses for the global economy.
The OECD estimates that 2.5 million jobs will be lost worldwide in 2015 1 due to non-compliance with copyright laws. Despite all the algorithmic creativity and obscure data deployed to compute this number, “the model struggles with (...) a single market outside of Europe: China.” 2 Indeed. China is one giant proof that the absence of copyright enforcement can actually empower millions of people to learn, and that it can eventually become beneicial for both the local and global economy.

In China, shanzhai (which is related to the English word ‘counterfeit’) products are widely used by a large amount of Chinese users and have been fully integrated into the society. This paper investigates the situated behaviours and knowledge that Chinese shanzhai users employ with shanzhai products in everyday life. Drawing on ethnographic research we conducted in Shanghai in 2010, we present detailed portraits of three shanzhai users to show that shanzai products are not simply low-priced counterfeits of well-known brands, but rather are extensions of their users, who engage with particular product categories in socially accepted ways to enact identity, generate pride and avoid shame. In this regard, we also we consider the different use scenarios for both shanzhai and authentic products.

Architectural creativity is a contested but enlightening idea in the discourse of China’s booming creative industry. In this paper, three intriguing phenomena with regard to Chinese architectural creations are examined: the popularity of miniature world theme parks since the late 1980s, the mania of replicating life-size buildings or even entire Western townscapes in Chinese urban suburbs since the 2000s, and, most recently, the popular online poll for “the 10 ugliest buildings in China” since 2010. Although they seem unconnected, these three phenomena are projections of the transforming urban imagination in contemporary China. The paper questions the argument about current architectural duplications as “monumental assertions of China's global primacy” (Carlson 2012). The author argues that these endeavors may imply underlying desires of the Chinese public that have been suppressed in the complicated political and economic situations in post-1989 China.

Having once been the headquarters of ‘Made in China,’ Shenzhen’s industry is currently undergoing profound change. The appearance of new urban places for technological innovation is reviving the ageing industrial processes of this manufacturing city.
This new ‘Made in China’ plan, first suggested by experts (Li, 2015) and a few academics (Lindtner, 2014, 2015), is supposed to transform Shenzhen into the Silicon Valley of hardware. Two groups, one local shanzhai[ Shanzhai, literally meaning ‘mountain village,’ refers to counterfeit or coarse imitations of big brand name goods by artisans or small Chinese companies, particularly in electronics.] community and the other a more international maker community, are thought to be the main drivers of this change using values of open innovation. This idea of rebooting ‘Made in China’ is widely present on the Internet and of course, has the support of the Chinese government (zhongguo zhizao 2025).
While both communities, the international makers and the shanzhai, draw on open innovation, they do not have the same goals nor the same values. For the shanzhai, open innovation means total deregulation and a kind of coopetition that poorly masks fierce competition. For the makers, open innovation does not entirely eliminate the classic tension between ‘open’ and ‘closed’ common in the world of makers (Garnier, 2014). These two communities, while both located in Shenzhen because of the advantages the city offers, still rarely collaborate.
This study, based on extended field research, focuses primarily on describing the models of open innovation in the Shenzhen electronics cluster. The first section presents the concepts involved in open innovation and the second section, its relationship to business strategies and to the characteristics of the society, the region, and the organizations involved. The third analyzes the electronics cluster’s history and changes over time and the various models of open innovation places that developed in Shenzhen. The article concludes with a more detailed discussion of our findings about the various configurations of groups working in innovation.

This essay questions the fascination with shanzhai products, in particular by people from advanced economies. Why do shanzhai products make us laugh? What does this tell us about our shared assumptions on brands and their symbolic meanings? Or about the newness dogma dominating Euro-American cultures? Instead of focusing on the creative potential of shanzhai, this essay highlights the liberating effect of blunt copying.

The article puts forward the ethnomethodological concept of procedural consequentiality as a proposed methodology for the study of objects. Instead of determining a universal relationship between discourses, practices and objects through a logically deduced social
theory, this concept asks what effects discourses, practices or objects have on the course of observable, situated events. This takes into account the possibility that seemingly identical objects can give rise to very different consequences in different situations, or even that their material properties can be rendered completely irrelevant. In order to elucidate this approach, the article sketches out the procedural consequentiality of imitation products in three different situations in China. What purports to be the ‘same’ object has a completely different relevance in the different situations. Therefore, instead of developing an overarching phenomenology of imitation, the more productive approach appears to be a study of the situation-specific procedural consequentiality of things. (Paper in german language).

Enquanto principais tradições filosóficas do oriente, China, Índia, Japão e Coréia frequentemente se chocaram com valores e escolas de pensamento ocidentais. A Ásia não possui uma identidade ideológica unificada, mas uma série de tradições autóctones, operando intenso intercâmbio entre si ao longo do tempo. Valores filosóficos do extremo oriente, no concernente à identidade e originalidade são tão abundantemente variados que seria irrazoável esperar que valores essencialmente ocidentais fossem tomados como truísmos nestas regiões. Tais diferenças são acentuadas em cenários de comércio internacional. Culturas ocidentais enfatizam o valor da “identidade continuada” de forma extrema, ao passo que culturas orientais lidam com a esta questão epistemológica de maneira mais orientada à impermanência. A aplicação dos direitos de propriedade intelectual em algumas regiões, portanto, permanece um construto tautológico, ao invés de se traduzir no adequado instrumento de distribuição de riqueza que deveria representar.

Cultural studies seem to dominate the field of management and innovation in China. Researchers
have defined and considered Confucianism and a number of common, transnational Asian/Chinese
values and practices allegedly unifying China and part of East Asia. These values and practices
have been erected as the cultural pillars of “Chinese management”, “Chinese entrepreneurship”
and, more recently, “indigenous innovation” in the ethnic Chinese world and now mainland
China. We believe these values and practices, frequently claimed as unique and fueling innovation
in Chinese firms, to be potentially manipulated for strategic purposes, by political authorities as
well as business organizations.
The purpose of this article is to examine the aforementioned premises and to question the notions
of Chinese ethnicity, values, management and innovation from political and strategic perspectives.
We first present the emergence of “Chinese values” and “Chinese Management”. We then
consider this emergence in relation to political agendas and the renewal of Asianism or New
Confucianism. The second part analyzes how such values and ethnicity can be utilized by
entrepreneurs for both defensive and offensive business purposes. We then illustrate our debate
with some reflections on the “Shanzhai” form of “indigenous innovation” before concluding with
implications for researchers, managers and entrepreneurs and discussing the dangers of exoticism
and avenues for future empirical research.

Faked in China is a critical account of the cultural challenge faced by China following its accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001. It traces the interactions between nation branding and counterfeit culture, two manifestations of the globalizing Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) regime that give rise to competing visions for the nation. Nation branding is a state-sanctioned policy, captured by the slogan “From Made in China to Created in China,” which aims to transform China from a manufacturer of foreign goods into a nation that creates its own IPR-eligible brands. Counterfeit culture is the transnational making, selling, and buying of unauthorized products. This cultural dilemma of the postsocialist state demonstrates the unequal relations of power that persist in contemporary globalization.