Why 'Shanzhai' Is Key To President Obama's China Meetings

Barack Obama doesn't have time to become fluent in Chinese before he meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping on today in California. Yet, he may wish to familiarize himself with a key Chinese word that captures much of what's fueling China's economy. That word is ‘shanzhai' (shān zhài), which originally referred to a mountain hamlet protected by a stockade, but now roughly translates as ‘copycat' or, something that is fake, counterfeit or a knockoff.

Shanzhai is so important that it's one of just ten words that Chinese author Yu Hua says describes China. As he writes in his 2011 book China in Ten Words "...the word "copycat" has given the word ‘imitation' a new meaning . . . allowing it to acquire additional shades of meaning: counterfeiting, infringement, deviations from the standard, mischief, and caricature." Shanzhai translates as "mountain stronghold," but in common usage, it refers to cheap and often poor quality imitation products, according to China Digital Times.

A good example of shanzhai appears at the main gate to East China Normal University in Shanghai. A large sign portraying the powder blue and sunflower gold Walmart logo seems to indicate the presence of a Walmart store. However, as my son who lives in Shanghai explained, the logo is the only "true" Walmart product around --- there's nothing from Walmart sold in the store. While there are ten Walmart stores throughout Shanghai, none of them is next to ECNU.

Copycatting may be so ubiquitous because it doesn't have the stigma in China that it has elsewhere. For example, the New York Times reported that Lei Jun, one of China's wealthiest entrepreneurs, is making a fortune by imitating Steve Jobs, the late head of Apple, and the inspiration for the company's phenomenally successful iPhones. Jun dresses in a black, sleek style that Jobs did and Jun's company Xiaomi sold several million mobile phones last year that are basically imitations of Apple's iPhone. Many of China's businesses boast that their goods are fake. A website proudly announced a ‘high copy tablet PC' that is a good imitation of the Apple iPad.

As Yu recounts in his book, Obama, himself, is a victim of copycatting. A company called "Harvard Communications" presents the president as endorsing his "Blackberry" --- a device that is, in fact, a "Blockberry Whirlwind 9500." This type of copycatting is prevalent, with familiar consumer brands having names that sound like their Western originals --- Samsing for Samsung, Nokir for Nokia, and so on.

Many Chinese may not perceive copycatting as being dishonest. As Yu explains after finding a pirated edition of his book, the bookseller insisted the book wasn't pirated, it was merely a copycat.

Copycatting is as much a phenomenon in China's real estate sector as it is in the high tech sector. The real-estate developer SOHO China has commissioned the architect Zaha Hadid to develop the Wangjing SOHO project in Beijing that evokes a futuristic style that characterizes SOHO China. The project is so glamorous and high profile, that a replica building in Chongqing may be finished before the original project is completed.

This movement has a name: duplitecture, as described by Bianca Bosker in Original Copies: Architectural Mimicry in Contemporary China. As Bosker notes, the Chinese real estate industry has changed the slogan "location, location, location" to "replication, replication, replication."

Bosker asserts that copying is so widespread in China because to the Chinese, "mimicry is actually a form of mastery, in a symbolic sense." Whether it's the replica of the Palace of Versailles in Hongzhou or the copy of the English town Dorchester in Chengdu, the Chinese have an attraction toward copying that Bosker says is "a manifestation of cultural constants that include deeply rooted attitudes toward replication and a longstanding tradition of the imitative appropriation of the alien." The notion that copycatting is an acceptable form of expression is "found within traditional Chinese philosophy, value systems and power relations," Bosker says.

As President Obama heads into his meetings with President Xi, he would do well to keep in mind that it will take a lot more than two days to break the thousands of years of culture behind the "shanzhai" tradition that is the fuel driving China's economy.