China asks: Who is copying whom?

In the 1990s, a simple scene in a luxury store summed up how the world viewed China. A wealthy shopper examines an expensive suit bearing the label of one of the great French fashion houses. Everything about it screams luxury: the fabric, the cut and the price, which only millionaires would dare to pay.
But then he is shocked to notice the small line hidden inside: ‘Made in China.’
The response at the time was unequivocal: yes, the suit was genuine and not a fake. The parent company had given China strict authorisation to manufacture its products. Whether´-or-not the wealthy customer believed it, reality was moving in one -dir-ection: China was producing the world’s finest brands with the owners’ full blessing.
‘Made in China’ is no longer just an indication of origin. It has become a sign of a shifting balance of power in the world. What was once dismissed as an inexpensive industrial outpost has evolved into a hub that dictates the rhythm of supply chains, technology prices and the very nature of global competition.
Since then, everything has changed. The phrase that was once ignored as proof of low quality is now a hallmark of goods flooding the world, from microchips and electric vehicles to jewellery, handbags, and high-end garments — global brands manufactured in China. This is not just an economic story-;- it is a reversal in the meaning of value itself.
Recalling Gomorrah, the book by Italian writer Roberto Saviano which exposed the dark underbelly of the luxury fashion industry, is useful here. Saviano reveals that the white suit worn by Angelina Jolie at the Oscars was produced in workshops controlled by the Italian mafia and staffed by Chinese labourers. He describes those running this industry as ‘criminals and killers’ who exploit workers in order to dress the red carpet in immaculate white.
The paradox that Saviano presents to us is brutal: glamour on the red carpet and crime and exploitation in the factory. This forced him to live under permanent protection and in hiding after his book sold millions of copies and earned him what he himself termed ‘death in life.’
The same West that spent decades accusing China of stealing ideas moved its own factories — and its intellectual property — there in search of cheaper labour and higher profit. A new generation of Chinese engineers and workers emerged, dealing daily with the most intimate secrets of Western technology.
There was a time when imitation was something levelled at China. Today, however, it is China that turns to the world and asks: who is copying whom?
Once accused of pirating foreign ideas, China has become a rising power since the late 1990s, determined to protect its own. The American writer Thomas Friedman was not exaggerating when he told his children — and, by extension, all Western children — the following:
‘Study hard, because there are children in China who want to take your jobs in the future.’
Friedman’s warning was no mere piece of parental advice. It was an early indication that the centre of gravity of the knowledge economy was shifting eastwards. As a member of the American elite, he recognised that competition would no longer be between companies within the same country, but between generations of children growing up in different environments: Western children who consume technology and Chinese children who help to build it. In this context, China is not just a low-cost manufacturing hub, but a vast pool of talent rapidly acquiring the skills needed to enter the global labour market as engineers, designers, and innovators.
At its core, Friedman’s warning is an acknowledgement that the West no longer monopolises the future. Consider, for example, the significance of the British government approving China’s request to build its largest embassy in Europe in the heart of London.
The fact that Chinese courts are now the busiest in the world for intellectual property cases does not simply mean that China is copying Western legal norms. It also means that China now has something of its own to fear losing. Those who live off stolen ideas do not go to court.
According to The Economist, Chinese courts now handle more than 550,000 intellectual property cases a year. Judges work at a pace bordering on the inhuman, hearing roughly one case a day. Despite procedures being so slow that it can take three months just to get a case on the court’s docket, Shanghai remains the preferred venue for such disputes.
Furthermore, China is no longer the accused, but the accuser. The Chinese coffee chain Luckin Coffee successfully sued a Thai company that copied its name and logo. The Chinese renewable energy firm Trina Solar has filed a lawsuit against its Canadian rival, accusing it of infringing its intellectual property rights in the United States. As Chinese companies expand abroad, more such legal battles are expected.
The question ‘Who is copying whom?’ is no longer just a commercial quip-;- it has become a question about where the centre of gravity in modern civilisation lies. Who sets the standards? Who decides what a smartphone should look like, how fast a processor should be and how an electric car should be designed? When Chinese companies start chasing their foreign competitors in court, it suggests that the notion of what constitutes “originality” is shifting eastward.
At its deepest level, the question is about who has the right to define what is original. In the past, imitation was measured by China’s ability to copy Western products. Today, however, imitation is measured by how dependent Western companies have become on Chinese supply chains, and by how hard they try to keep up with the speed of innovation in Asian factories. When Chinese firms are filing intellectual property lawsuits against foreign rivals, it signals a reversal in the -dir-ection of imitation. China is no longer picking up scraps at the gates of Western factories-;- the West is now racing to keep pace with a Chinese production model that is faster, cheaper and more adaptable.
At this stage, the old accusation of ‘copying’ becomes meaningless. It is no longer the first to invent that sets the tempo, but rather the one who keeps developing, producing and imposing their standards on the market.
China, once the imitator, is now the imitated. The phrase that used to trigger suspicion in luxury boutiques, ‘Made in China,’ has turned into a question that is haunting the industrial world:
Can we still tell the difference between the original and the copy when the original is Chinese too?

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