TN Note: China is a well-established Technocracy. It rapid growth has been made possible, not by internally-developed technology, but with stolen designs from other more advanced nations. The list is staggering, and you must read the full article and view the side-by-side pictures to get the full impact of this. The point is, Technocrats don’t care where they get their technology from, and will go to great lengths to get it for free, as demonstrated with China. This scientistic attitude that any and all technology belongs to them is potent danger to the entire system.
Historically, China has been a great innovator contributing inventions such as gunpowder, paper and the compass to human advancement. However, China has earned an international reputation in recent decades as being the home of a prolific copycat culture.
The Chinese have become proficient at cloning products ranging from designer handbags and the latest smartphones to movies and alcoholic beverages. Fake Apple stores, counterfeit KFC restaurants and imitation IKEA big-box outlets dot the Chinese landscape. They have even built entire replica European towns.
Some Western observers believe this cultural attitude towards imitation is rooted in Confucianism where followers traditionally learned by replicating masterworks and then tried to improve upon them.
The fact that the Chinese commonly refer to today’s imitation products as “Shanzhai” indicates that they recognize the dubious nature of the current practice. The term“Shanzhai” translates to “mountain stronghold” and was originally applied to pirate factories producing counterfeit goods in remote areas beyond the reach of regulatory control.
The copycat business is no longer restricted to outlying lawless regions. It has entered the mainstream and been embraced by government officials who seem content to allow other nations to develop products and technology which they can then acquire legitimately through licensing or illegitimately through counterfeiting and espionage. This approach allows China to stay competitive on the world stage while saving them the time and money it would cost to develop their own products.
An industry in which Chinese cloning has excelled to a disconcerting degree is the manufacture of weapon systems. China’s expanding military and growing assertiveness has been bolstered by weapons cloned from the arsenals of other countries. Bleeding edge U.S. aircraft including the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and Northrop Grumman X-47B unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) have Chinese counterparts that are remarkably similar. Some of the technology used in these designs was almost certainly acquired through a vigorous Chinese cyber spying campaign.
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