Why does China Copy Designs?

US has Google, EBay and 2nd Life and China has Baidu, AliBaba and HiPiHi. In each of the example, for every US company which makes it work, China will have a carbon copy. This is reminiscent of Japan in the early 1970s, where they copied and innovated upon the electronic gadgets and cars. Our resident contributor, Brian Ling provides some thoughts about why China copy designs and where this is all leading to.

Contributed by Design Translator

This post started as an interesting discussion in another post, when a Design Sojourn reader wondered why China suffers from this syndrome of copying product designs from the West. I’m no expert on this but having worked with Designers and Vendors from China, as well as frequent trips there, I would like to give my take on this issue.

Firstly I need to say I am not trying to defend China nor give any excuse on this issue. This is because the reasons are rather largely due to cultural factors. In the end I would like to see this post as bridging the cultural gap between the East and West, by hopefully allowing both sides to understand each other better.

Now let’s jump right in.

When I deal with China on the design front, this copying issue becomes a whole other ball game. For one, the reality of enforcement is not easy – possible to do, but not easy. In particular for the medium to smaller Chinese companies where funding is limited, I have to work out design strategies that actually deal with and possibly counter this issue. In reality many companies don’t even worry about protecting their designs as it’s a zero sum game in their mind. I’ll explain a little more about this later.

With the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, things are starting to change but in reality the mindset is so ingrained in the culture it will be difficult to change.

1) Top down living

Don’t forget despite all the changes in China, it’s still a Communist country with a Capitalistic business system. Special Economic Regions I think they are called. However in reality it’s still a very top down managed country, a big brother approach to the culture, and a huge disparity in the rich and poor. Everyone is answerable to the person above him and thinking out of the box is not encouraged.

As a result many take a safe approach towards things, and this has far reaching implications.

2) Business decisions are about justified returns

In China almost everything is a business decision. When you grow up in a country where life is cheap, things do get brutal and money talks. There is no area for the softer aspects of the business, like branding, experience and emotive products etc. These things are intangible and hard to justify as many decisions are made using an ROI (Return of Investment) as a base. Money put out equals more money back. It’s the best way to make money, but things start to get very crazy when it goes too far.