Who needs Nokia? The spirit of shanzhai rules the phone-pirate's cove in Shenzhen. There's no shortage of counterfeit items made in China. If a product can be branded, it can be copied..
Clothes, Jewelry and Accessories Handbags by Coach and Louis Vuitton, watches by Rolex, bracelets by Tiffany, suits and ties by Zegna, winter jackets by North Face. Knock offs of these products abound at Chinese markets, where outfitting yourself with the finest (fake) name brands will cost you as little as $10 to $20 for some of these items--even less if you know how to haggle.
Movies and TV Shows Despite years of rhetoric from Beijing about crackdowns, pirated DVDs remain ubiquitous in China, selling for as little as $1 per disc. Whether it's The Dark Knight or the latest season of Heroes, cheap copies are not hard to find.
Music In the age of digital piracy, there's still nothing like a genuine fake compact disc for some consumers. CDs of all kinds of music, including rock, pop, classical and jazz, are widely available for less than $1 each.
MP3 Players After they've burned their fake CDs onto their hard drives, consumers of counterfeits can play their music on knock-off music players. It's piracy's answer to vertical integration of the marketplace.
Phones From the cheapest models of Nokia to the latest iPhone, virtually no model of mobile phone is immune from piracy, especially in the age of "shanzhai." Many of China's fakes are made and distributed wholesale in Shenzhen, then sold in markets all around China and Southeast Asia.
Software Microsoft products, from its operating system to its Office suite, continue to be a staple of the always abundant market in pirated software, mostly priced at pennies or nickels on the dollar.
Pills and Potions Cheaper than Canadian generics, but also much more dangerous, are Chinese fakes of pharmaceuticals. Sophisticated fakes of Viagra, Lipitor and high-end cancer and heart drugs have made their way from factories in China to drugstores around the world.
Cars Established automakers have long accused China of copying their models. A popular example is the Chinese car maker Chery's QQ, a low-end minicar that General Motors has complained looks exactly like its Chevrolet Spark, which is also sold in China.
Sports Equipment Aside from the high greens fees at many Chinese courses, golfing doesn't have to be an expensive pursuit in China. Not when a full set of the latest-model knock-offs of Ping, TaylorMade or Callaway clubs can be had for $100 to $200
Luggage As they leave a well-stocked, fake-goods market like the famous Silk Alley in Beijing, scofflaw tourists can help themselves to fake luggage for packing all of their illegal bounty. A Samsonite case that sells for more than $1,000 in a retail store in Beijing can be had in its knock-off version for $20 a few blocks away.
AP
