Hasta La Ideas

Elaborate disguises, subterfuge, slightly subpar swooshes: welcome to the world of counterfeit-sneaker manufacturing. In the latest issue of The New York Times Magazine, Nicholas Schmidle voyages inside the knockoff factories of Putian, a Chinese town teeming with ersatz Nikes, Adidases, Pumas, and Reeboks. “Shoes from Putian are designed primarily for export,” writes Schmidle, “and in corporate-footwear and intellectual-property rights circles, Putian has become synonymous with high-end fakes, shoes so sophisticated that it is difficult to distinguish the real ones from counterfeits.” In some cases, the only way to tell the difference is by the smell of the glue, notes one knockoff factory owner. And while the Chinese government doesn’t turn a blind eye to counterfeiting, things do get culturally complicated.

Beijing’s top intellectual-property officials…seem to disagree over what even constitutes counterfeiting. Last year, a debate occurred between the heads of the State Intellectual Property Office and the National Copyright Administration. The dispute revolved around shanzhai, a term that translates literally into “mountain fortress”; in contemporary usage, it connotes counterfeiting that you should take pride in. There are shanzhai iPhones and shanzhai Porsches.

One top intellectual property official goes so far as to distinguish shanzai from counterfeiting. “Shanzhai shows the cultural creativity of the common people,” said Liu Binjie of the National Copyright Administration. “It fits a market need, and people like it. We have to guide shanzhai culture and regulate it.” And then there’s the argument that counterfeiting is a form of industrial training: a technically illegal way to bone up on branding and production techniques. “We are developing our own brand now,” one fake-shoe factory manager tells Schmidle. “In the longer term we want to make all our own brands, to make our own reputation.”

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