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Chinese manufacturers are increasingly "faking" popular Indian products of consumer goods giants such as Dabur and ITC, undermining the legitimacy of brands and causing losses worth as much as $5 billion annually, officials said. more ›

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Gaopeng aka Groupon China continues to be in the news for all the wrong reasons. The group-buying site has been caught with its pants down for selling fake Tissots and a class action suit is underway: more ›

It would have been so much easier if China had put a full stop to the sordid affair of the Confucius Peace Prize, but nope, authorities have decided to charge ahead with their public relations trainwreck. Apparently, a rival group calling themselves the "Confucius Prize for World Peace" quietly emerged on September 21, the International Day of Peace -- that's one whole week before we found out the original organisers had been disbanded. more ›

Think the RMB25 cut-wash-blow at your local salon is a bargain? Think again. Chinese news reports are now saying that a lot of the shampoo used in hair salons around China are just cheap blends of thickener, fragrance, shampoo powder and water costing between 0.4-1.2 yuan per kilo. In some of the more extreme cases, experts have found the shampoo to contain mercury, sulfur or benzene. This could either damage your hair, cause you to go bald, or even give you cancer. more ›

"...[S]ome local furniture dealers have withdrawn claims that their products are fully imported, admitting to Shanghai Daily that the furniture was in fact made in China or other developing countries. In an outlet of Yuexing Homes in Jing'an District, Shanghai Daily found that sales personnel no longer said their products were fully imported. Sales persons for several brands, such as Duke York, Mahogany, and Lucca Magic, all said that their products were produced either on the Chinese mainland or in Indonesia. Executives from France-based Roche Bobois said in Shanghai yesterday that they have suffered considerable loss recently, as most new clients canceled their orders after the DaVinci scandal. The company wouldn't disclose the size of the losses." [Shanghai Daily] more ›

Owen Fletcher of the WSJ reports, "It wasn’t as dramatic as in years past, when intellectual property authorities used steam-rollers instead of shredding machines, but what a recent Chinese anti-piracy activity lacked in heavy machinery it more than made up for in quantity."
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Shanghaiist reader Andy Shum sent us the following screengrabs from a 1st season episode of Criminal Minds, a CBS police procedural drama that premiered September 2005, that also happens to be one of the most popular US TV series on Tudou. "This, being episode 20," says Shum, "would have aired in May, 2006. Coincidence?" more ›

Finally a Chinese brand that features some smart use of alliteration! more ›

This shanzhai logo is utterly disgraceful. At least back in the day, Yonghe King bothered to "localise" it a bit: more ›

It's the Eiffel Tower! No, it's the Oriental Pearl Tower! Naaah, it's just the Taizhou TV Tower: more ›

Many of us here at Shanghaiist were so-called "kids of the 80s." So, it should come as no surprise that we were among the thousands for whom that decade's most famous slab of clay has come to mind in the time Haibao has existed. Whether or not the coincidence is intentional or accidental is a moot point anyway: Gumby is green. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the mascot of Xinxiang Haibao Electrical Appliance Company: not only is he blue, but he also wears a cape, much like nü-Haibao does in the videos where he patrols Shanghai's streets for fakes, weapons and all things evil. Thankfully, the company reports it has "never had so much free publicity" - and after all, isn't public interest what branding is meant to generate anyway? more ›

Since we broke the story of the "pre-emptive cloning" of the iPad (and here's another story of the same device back in Oct 2009) by Chinese company Shenzhen Great Long Brother Industrial Co., Wu Xiaolong, the president of the company has been an angry man. Earlier today, he fumed to our friend Aritz Parra of El Mundo, charging that Apple has not only replicated the design of its multi-touch tablet, but also the device support and the sleeve. They're , he says. more ›

Talk about preemptive cloning! While the world is swooning over Apple's announcement (that was, granted, completely expected) about it's new toy - the iPad, Chinese copycatters have already come out with their shanzhai versions... three months ago. more ›

We chanced upon this mildly amusing "report" on counterfeits and piracy in China from Hoofy & Boo's News & Views which claims to be the first ever animated business television show. Apparently the show has been designed for serious entrepreneurs and investors. For more of their clips, click here. more ›

Photo from Laurence&Annie more ›

Finally after much hype and news, the Meizu M8 is due for release on December 8th. The guys from PC Online have had the chance to test it against the iPod Touch (because iPhones are not legally available in China yet). more ›

Steven Lin of Youku Buzz informs us:

It’s rumored that the Meizu M8 will be on the shelf later this month with a 3.3 inch 720×480 touch screen (much higher than iPhone’s 480×320) and compatibility with most mainstream multimedia formats you can find online (who needs Apple’s iTunes Store any more?). And my friend from Engadget China told me, the price would be RMB 2300 (USD 335).

Youku Buzz draws our attention to this shameless copy of Transformers inspired new TV series called “Hyperwiz” (百变机兽), coming soon to a gogglebox near you. The logo of the show is made to resemble the traditional Chinese character for car, “車”. more ›

If you're wondering where to go on your next shopping trip, look no further. Wen'an Jie in Nanjing houses all your favourite brands and promises to make any jaded Shanghai shopper come alive again. Our favourite one in there has gotta be "Pizza Huh". more ›

The counterfeit appears from 00:14 onwards. more ›

This one's for all you fans of Chinese counterfeits gadget freaks. From Engadget.com:

After what feels like centuries of waiting (and suffering through that painful CeBIT demo), we finally get to see the Meizu M8's OS in action... and it's not as bad as you think. Sure, the interface is totally derivative of the iPhone, and there is that pesky cursor floating around, but all-in-all it looks like the company has managed to knock out a decent -- if incredibly familiar -- UI for its long-delayed phone. Still, there's some low rent hilarity in this video. Our favorites? The smattering of soft porn pictures and video, and Meizu CEO and all-around bon vivant Jack Wong revealed in a reflection...

The Olympics has come and gone without a hitch and while BOCOG officials can finally heave a sigh of relief, we have a few questions in our mind — Will people on the streets continue to be as friendly? Will counterfeit products be kept off the streets? Will it be as easy to get work visas as it was before all this Olympics hoopla came along? Japan's Fuji TV has the answers to one of the above questions in this new report on fake Olympic t-shirts being sold on the streets one day after the Olympic closing ceremony, and we quote from JapanProbe.com:

The t-shirts are being sold along with other popular counterfeit brand goods, and the sales are going on in broad daylight in front of the Bird’s Nest stadium that hosted the opening and closing ceremonies of the games. Foreign tourists are being sold the illegal goods in plain sight of police officers, who walk by without taking any action. more ›

From Gizmodo:

Meizu will finally release the iPhone-wannabe M8 in August, according to a cryptic message board post by CEO Jack Wong. The first version will have 128MB RAM and an unspecified amount of storage, and a second version should ship in October with 256MB RAM and 8GB on-board flash. The funniest part? The M8 will cost around $320, or $120 more than the AT&T subsidized 8GB iPhone 3G here in the US of A. Luckily for them (and us) this probably won't see its way outside of China.

Following the closure of the infamous Xiangyang “fake goods” Market back in 2006, vendors have scattered all over Shanghai such as Qipu Lu but most have congregated in Pudong. The underground market by the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum remains the largest in terms of variety but we’ve found Rongfu Building （融福大厦）along Pudong Nan Lu, to be more convenient. more ›