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His show also marks a new high point for China's "shanzhai" culture. Shanzhai, which literally means "mountain fortress" and implies banditry and lack of state control, refers to China's vast array of name-brand knockoffs. Shanzhai versions of Apple Inc.'s iPhone, for example, include the HiPhone, the SciPhone and the deliberately misspelled citrus-themed iOrgane. Recently, the definition of shanzhai has expanded. On China's Internet, blogs, bulletin boards and news sites carry photos of automobiles jerry-rigged to run on railroad tracks ("shanzhai trains"), fluffy dogs trimmed and dyed to look like the national mascot ("shanzhai pandas") and models of the Beijing Olympic Games' National Stadium made out of sticks ("shanzhai Bird's Nest"). A property developer in Nanjing, hoping to lure business and buzz, set up storefront facades with logos such as "Haagon-Bozs," "Pizza Huh," "Bucksstar Coffee," "KFG" and "McDnoald's." Images of what became known as "Shanzhai Street" spread rapidly online. Once a term used to suggest something cheap or inferior, shanzhai now suggests to many a certain Chinese cleverness and ingenuity. Shanzhai culture "is from the grass roots and for the grass roots," says Han Haoyue, a media critic in Beijing, who sees it as a means of self-expression. "It gives people another choice and the possibility of resisting dominant cultural values." Chinese authorities appear to regard shanzhai warily, especially when it comes to intellectual property issues. "The shanzhai culture as a celebration of the DIY [do it yourself] spirit or as a parody to mainstream culture can add fun to our daily lives," said one recent editorial in an official state newspaper. "However, we should remain vigilant against it as a justification for rip-off products."

"There have been several Shanzhai mobile cases exposed recently, including India's expulsion of China Shanzhai mobiles. China's Shanzhai culture has got a pretty bad reputation the world over, to the point where other Shanzhai manufactures complain: "copycatting shouldn't be so unscrupulous; law breaking can't be that obviously extreme. HAFF-COMM forces all of us into the international spotlight.""

"The common Western narrative of China is of a country whose businesses unfairly compete by stealing intellectual property from others and making money off of copycat technology. While undoubtedly a large amount of IP theft does happen in China, its hard to believe that anyone can look at China and not see innovation everywhere. I've noticed that this question of innovation in China comes up often among Western observers of China. Why? Do we feel that the playing field is unfair? Are we in the U.S. desperately looking for signs of an enduring competitive advantage even as we've shipped our entire manufacturing base overseas? I'm not sure, but the topic sure comes up a lot. Yes, China can innovate, but what kind of innovation? Jacob Hsu (Symbio) remarked that in Silicon Valley, investors and entrepreneurs are looking for "business model" innovation, which I interpreted to mean a new product that creates new markets. He characterized Chinese innovation as mostly incremental "technology" innovation in the past, but that increasing we were seeing highly innovative companies emerge, such as Tencent. He also highlighted the phenomenon of "shanzhai" as an example of innovation on a much smaller scale. The "shanzhai" consumer electronics economy in China is rapidly creating next generation connected devices out of laptop and mobile phone components, and that in most cases the minimum scale required to produce these units can be as small as a few hundred units to make money. Conventional wisdom equates intellectual property protection with innovation. But the "shanzhai" phenomenon challenges this idea. Could the lack of intellectual property protection create opportunities to remix, modify and mashup existing technology that creates an "innovation capability" for China's entrepreneurs even as the lack of IP protection prevents them from fully capitalizing on their successes (because the next guy will just rip them off)? In this

"While the ban of Chinese mobiles has discouraged the growth of the shanzhai handsets in India, they still stand a chance if they provide proper IMEI numbers and if they partner with companies like Karbonn. Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst, Gartner, said, "Established global device manufacturers are losing ground due to fierce competition from local and Chinese manufacturers in the low-cost segment." He added, "Price remains the main criteria when buying any consumer electronic device in India, including a mobile device. Carrier strategies, lower tariffs and/or third-generation (3G) data plans will continue to shape the mobile device market in India." This is really encouraging for the shanzhai players."

"Tracking the products, trends and reach of China's local to global technology & culture."