George Chen

Mr. Shangkong | Behind the scenes at CES Asia in Shanghai, complaints about Chinese copycats

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More than 200 technology companies from 15 countries are showcasing their consumer technology innovations at CES Asia which takes place from May 25 to 27. Photo: George Chen

George Chen

Published: 3:30pm, 26 May 2015Updated: 4:39pm, 26 May 2015

While the inaugural Consumer Electronics Show (CES) Asia, taking place in Shanghai this week, has been as jargon-filled as any technology event: B2B, B2C, O2O, etc. But one acronym is only mentioned in private conversations: C2C.

C2C or 'Copy2China' is the practice of copying everything new and popular in the West in the Chinese market. Examples abound in both hardware and internet services, thanks in part to Beijing's tight control of the domestic internet market and policy.

Xiaomi, the country's leading domestic smartphone brand, is often called the 'Apple of China' for its cut-price devices' resemblance to the California-based tech giant's products. With leading global social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter having been banned in China for more than five years, locals use similar services offered by Chinese internet giants such as Sina, best known for its Chinese-language micro-blogging service Weibo.

As CES Asia kicked off on Monday, I walked around the two big exhibition halls and easily found quite a number of so-called “new and innovative” products that are made in China but are remarkably similar in terms of function and design to popular devices developed by Western technology firms. "This looks so familiar" is the common refrain when visitors spot something they feel is a copycat of a foreign product.

For example, I found a tablet looks almost identical to Apple’s iPad, down to the packaging, which is a spitting image of an iPad box.

Another Chinese company had brought a wearable device to CES Asia which looked incredibly similar to Google Glass. I asked a salesman about the resemblance and he said: "Google can do theirs and we do our own. It doesn't matter."