Shanzhai
Encyclopedia
Shanzhai refers to Chinese imitation and pirated brands and goods, particularly electronics. Literally "mountain village" or "mountain stronghold", the term refers to the mountain stockades of regional warlords or bandits, far away from official control. "Shanzhai" can also be stretched to refer to people who are lookalikes, low-quality or improved goods, as well as things done in parody
.
Historically, "shanzhai" is sometimes used as a metaphor to describe bandits who oppose and evade the corrupted authority to perform deeds they see as justified. One example of such bandits is the story of Outlaws of the Marsh
(水浒传)
The use of "Shanzhai" to refer to imitation products comes from Cantonese slang, in which "shanzhai factory" means an ill-equipped, low-end and family-based factory. However, with the accumulation of profit, quite a few of those factories invest a lot of money to improve their equipment. Some factories also get investment from someone other than family members. Nowadays, a significant portion of Shanzhai factories are no longer ill-equipped or family-based. And their products are no longer poor-quality. Yet they still can not escape the fate of no-brand (or fake brand), not-for-sale in top department stores with non-shanzhai phones. One of the motivations for going 'Shanzhai' is the difficult regulations the Chinese government has established to become an official cell phone manufacturer. So to avoid the hassles companies try to operate under the radar. They can avoid taxes that way and also avoid regulation.
Another account of the origin is that because imitation electronic appliance manufacturers are largely located in Shenzhen
, thus wholesalers from other parts of China started calling their products "Shenzhen product". Yet gradually "Shenzhen product" became "Shanzhai product" because they sound similar when people speak mandarin Chinese with a Cantonese accent.
’s data, 1.15 billion cell phones were sold worldwide in 2007, and according to data provided by the Chinese government, 150 million "Shanzhai" cell phones were sold in the same year, thus making up more than one tenth of the global sales. In 2010 the Financial Times estimated that Shanzhai phones accounted for about 20 per cent of the global 2G
mobile market.
The market for "shanzhai" cell phones is not only in China, but also in the surrounding developing countries in Asia, and developing countries in Africa and Latin America. The outstanding sales performance of "shanzhai" cell phones is usually attributed to their low price, multifunctional performance and imitations of trendy cell phone design. Although "shanzhai" companies do not use branding as a marketing strategy, they are known for their flexibility of design to meet specific market needs. For example, during Barack Obama
’s 2008 U.S. presidential election campaign, "shanzhai" cell phone companies started selling "Obama" cell phones in Kenya
, with the slogan "yes we can" and Obama’s name on the back of the cell phone. They also designed "Bird Nest
" and "Fuwa" (福娃) cell phones in light of the Beijing Olympic Games.
Before the booming shanzhai cell phone industries, since the early 2000s, imitation electronic products like DVD players and MP3 players were already manufactured in the Pearl River Delta
("珠三角") area. Many shanzhai cell phone companies accumulated their capital in that process. After understanding that many buyers like lookalike phones, but didn't need blaring fake logos, many manufacturers adopted a practice of not using fraudulent logos, instead opting for a generically designed logo. So while an overseas buyer can easily find a lookalike phone, some sellers only sell those without the fake logo.
Shanzhai cellphones can be sold at very low prices compared to normal cellphones. On average, the imitations sell at retailers at about $US100-$US150, while production costs are about $US20.
Shanzhai cell phone factories are able to manufacture at a very low cost for two reasons. First, they do not buy cell phone manufacture licenses from the Chinese government, thus saving all the related costs. Second, the Taiwanese company Mediatek
has developed a complete chain of core technology support for cell phones to sell at a much lower cost than the traditional suppliers of large cell phone companies like Nokia
and Motorola
.
Mediatek chairman Tsai Ming-kai regrets the choice of the name Shanzhai by cell phone makers: "They were foolish to call themselves shanzai. They should have just stuck with 'whitebox', because then people used their name to criticise them," he says.
Although there many fake garments, watches, bags, and shoes in China, they are not called "shanzhai" products, perhaps because these fake products came into existence earlier than fake cellphones and the newer use of the term "shanzhai". "Shanzhai" cell phones may stand out as the most successful and most often discussed "shanzhai" products, because cell phones strongly symbolize wealth in china, but they are much more affordable than other symbolic signs of wealth like cars and apartments.
Quite a few shanzhai cell phone companies tried to exploit the market by making shanzhai Netbooks, but these gained little market acceptance and sales.
"Shanzhai" electric cars, which run on lead-acid batteries and sell for as little as $US2000-$US3000, are being produced in the Shandong province.
In January 2011 the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the State Administration of Industry and Commerce announced a crackdown on shanzhai phone sellers and manufacturers. The administration blamed "money-stealing" services that used the cheap phones to steal services using customers' SIM cards. Industry commentator Liu Sheng said that it was more likely to be linked to the country's intellectual property rights protection campaigns.
Shanzhaiism has a long tradition. Products needed to be designed to suit peasants, which form most of China's population.
Shanzhaiism has an equivalent English term: tinker. Lacking a garage, they build products in villages in the mountains that have stockade houses. However, with shanzhaiism in mind, people can produce fake and pirate products in a massively organized way.
Shanzhaiism can be analyzed using a term coined by Jean-Paul Sartre: Bad faith
. Fake and pirate products are produced. For example, there was once a so-called Fake-One Road ( 山寨一條街 ) in China.
This kind of phenomena is not confined to fake products. The mind set of shanzhaiism even extends to advertisements. For example, a shanzhai phone advertisement uses the president of the United States, Obama, to promote its shanzhai products.
While the purpose of the above mentioned shanzhai events is arguably just for the participants to have fun and to experience being the authority, other shanzhai cultural phenomena, like the shanzhai products, are profit-oriented. For example, some low-end performing agencies will hire people who look like pop stars to perform in rural areas, where people cannot afford to watch the performance of the actual stars. Thus shanzhai Jay Chou
( "山寨周杰伦"), shanzhai Andy Lau
("山寨刘德华") and shanzhai Faye Wong
("山寨王菲") can be seen performing in many underdeveloped places in China.
Shanzhai movies are another profit-driven shanzhai phenomenon. These movies usually have low budgets, yet achieve commercial success by parody
ing, making fun of or borrowing elements from high-end Hollywood blockbuster movies. One of the first shanzhai movies is Ning Hao
’(宁浩)s "Crazy Stone
"(疯狂的石头). It imitates the multi-angle shooting, rapid cutting and stunts that are usually used in Hollywood action movies, yet it retains the grass-roots Chinese set up. With a 3 million Hongkong dollar budget, "Crazy Stone" achieved 22 million-box-office revenue. Following its success, shanzhai movies like "the Big Movie" series ("大电影"系列) and "No.2 in the World" ("天下第二") were made. Some also argue that Hollywood parody movies like "Scary Movie
" are the true inspirational force behind shanzhai movies.
However, similar counterfeiting subcultures are not confined to China. Youtube memes that pose as coming feature film trailers, but are in fact a montage of past films could come from any part of the world, and would fit squarely into the definition of shanzhai.
host’s proposal during the "two conferences"(两会) this year. She proposed to establish relevant legislation that will eliminate the shanzhai phenomenon by arguing that the copycat culture associated with shanzhai will stifle genuine creativity and hamper awareness of property rights. While some agree with her, others point out that in order to give objective comment on the shanzhai phenomenon, one has to distinguish shanzhai products from pirated products and shanzhai culture from shanzhai products. They also argue that although many shanzhai culture events manifest themselves as copycat events, some also have true original elements. Western media like the Wall Street Journal and the New Yorker
have reported about the shanzhai phenomenon and presented it as a form of rebellion and resistance to the mainstream culture.
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
.
Origin
According to the Xiandai Hanyu Dictionary, (现代汉语词典), "Shanzhai" can stand for two meanings:- A fenced place in the forest.
- Villages in the mountain that have stockade houses.
Historically, "shanzhai" is sometimes used as a metaphor to describe bandits who oppose and evade the corrupted authority to perform deeds they see as justified. One example of such bandits is the story of Outlaws of the Marsh
Water Margin
Water Margin , also known as Outlaws of the Marsh, All Men Are Brothers, Men of the Marshes, or The Marshes of Mount Liang, is one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature.Attributed to Shi Nai'an and written in vernacular Chinese, the story, set in the Song Dynasty,...
(水浒传)
The use of "Shanzhai" to refer to imitation products comes from Cantonese slang, in which "shanzhai factory" means an ill-equipped, low-end and family-based factory. However, with the accumulation of profit, quite a few of those factories invest a lot of money to improve their equipment. Some factories also get investment from someone other than family members. Nowadays, a significant portion of Shanzhai factories are no longer ill-equipped or family-based. And their products are no longer poor-quality. Yet they still can not escape the fate of no-brand (or fake brand), not-for-sale in top department stores with non-shanzhai phones. One of the motivations for going 'Shanzhai' is the difficult regulations the Chinese government has established to become an official cell phone manufacturer. So to avoid the hassles companies try to operate under the radar. They can avoid taxes that way and also avoid regulation.
Another account of the origin is that because imitation electronic appliance manufacturers are largely located in Shenzhen
Shenzhen
Shenzhen is a major city in the south of Southern China's Guangdong Province, situated immediately north of Hong Kong. The area became China's first—and one of the most successful—Special Economic Zones...
, thus wholesalers from other parts of China started calling their products "Shenzhen product". Yet gradually "Shenzhen product" became "Shanzhai product" because they sound similar when people speak mandarin Chinese with a Cantonese accent.
Shanzhai products
The use of "shanzhai" became popular with the outstanding sale performance of "shanzhai" cell phones. According to GartnerGartner
Gartner, Inc. is an information technology research and advisory firm headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, United States. It was known as GartnerGroup until 2001....
’s data, 1.15 billion cell phones were sold worldwide in 2007, and according to data provided by the Chinese government, 150 million "Shanzhai" cell phones were sold in the same year, thus making up more than one tenth of the global sales. In 2010 the Financial Times estimated that Shanzhai phones accounted for about 20 per cent of the global 2G
2G
2G is short for second-generation wireless telephone technology. Second generation 2G cellular telecom networks were commercially launched on the GSM standard in Finland by Radiolinja in 1991...
mobile market.
The market for "shanzhai" cell phones is not only in China, but also in the surrounding developing countries in Asia, and developing countries in Africa and Latin America. The outstanding sales performance of "shanzhai" cell phones is usually attributed to their low price, multifunctional performance and imitations of trendy cell phone design. Although "shanzhai" companies do not use branding as a marketing strategy, they are known for their flexibility of design to meet specific market needs. For example, during Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
’s 2008 U.S. presidential election campaign, "shanzhai" cell phone companies started selling "Obama" cell phones in Kenya
Kenya
Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...
, with the slogan "yes we can" and Obama’s name on the back of the cell phone. They also designed "Bird Nest
Beijing National Stadium
Beijing National Stadium, also known officially as the National Stadium, or colloquially as the Bird's Nest , is a stadium in Beijing, China. The stadium was designed for use throughout the 2008 Summer Olympics and Paralympics.-History:...
" and "Fuwa" (福娃) cell phones in light of the Beijing Olympic Games.
Before the booming shanzhai cell phone industries, since the early 2000s, imitation electronic products like DVD players and MP3 players were already manufactured in the Pearl River Delta
Pearl River Delta
The Pearl River Delta , Zhujiang Delta or Zhusanjiao in Guangdong province, People's Republic of China is the low-lying area surrounding the Pearl River estuary where the Pearl River flows into the South China Sea...
("珠三角") area. Many shanzhai cell phone companies accumulated their capital in that process. After understanding that many buyers like lookalike phones, but didn't need blaring fake logos, many manufacturers adopted a practice of not using fraudulent logos, instead opting for a generically designed logo. So while an overseas buyer can easily find a lookalike phone, some sellers only sell those without the fake logo.
Shanzhai cellphones can be sold at very low prices compared to normal cellphones. On average, the imitations sell at retailers at about $US100-$US150, while production costs are about $US20.
Shanzhai cell phone factories are able to manufacture at a very low cost for two reasons. First, they do not buy cell phone manufacture licenses from the Chinese government, thus saving all the related costs. Second, the Taiwanese company Mediatek
MediaTek
MediaTek Inc. is a fabless semiconductor company, designing and selling components for wireless communication, optical storage, GPS, high-definition digital TV and DVD products. The company was founded on May 28, 1997...
has developed a complete chain of core technology support for cell phones to sell at a much lower cost than the traditional suppliers of large cell phone companies like Nokia
Nokia
Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational communications corporation that is headquartered in Keilaniemi, Espoo, a city neighbouring Finland's capital Helsinki...
and Motorola
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
.
Mediatek chairman Tsai Ming-kai regrets the choice of the name Shanzhai by cell phone makers: "They were foolish to call themselves shanzai. They should have just stuck with 'whitebox', because then people used their name to criticise them," he says.
Although there many fake garments, watches, bags, and shoes in China, they are not called "shanzhai" products, perhaps because these fake products came into existence earlier than fake cellphones and the newer use of the term "shanzhai". "Shanzhai" cell phones may stand out as the most successful and most often discussed "shanzhai" products, because cell phones strongly symbolize wealth in china, but they are much more affordable than other symbolic signs of wealth like cars and apartments.
Quite a few shanzhai cell phone companies tried to exploit the market by making shanzhai Netbooks, but these gained little market acceptance and sales.
"Shanzhai" electric cars, which run on lead-acid batteries and sell for as little as $US2000-$US3000, are being produced in the Shandong province.
In January 2011 the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the State Administration of Industry and Commerce announced a crackdown on shanzhai phone sellers and manufacturers. The administration blamed "money-stealing" services that used the cheap phones to steal services using customers' SIM cards. Industry commentator Liu Sheng said that it was more likely to be linked to the country's intellectual property rights protection campaigns.
Shanzhaiism
Shanzhaiism 山寨主義 is a philosophical term denoting a Chinese style of innovation with a peasant mind-set. Some observers think that Western style innovation cannot be developed in China. They say that, in the Web2.0 era, most innovative products and services are produced by the west, so it seems that China has no say and no way in this era.Shanzhaiism has a long tradition. Products needed to be designed to suit peasants, which form most of China's population.
Shanzhaiism has an equivalent English term: tinker. Lacking a garage, they build products in villages in the mountains that have stockade houses. However, with shanzhaiism in mind, people can produce fake and pirate products in a massively organized way.
Shanzhaiism can be analyzed using a term coined by Jean-Paul Sartre: Bad faith
Bad faith (existentialism)
Bad faith is a philosophical concept used by existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre to describe the phenomenon where a human being under pressure from societal forces adopts false values and disowns their innate freedom to act authentically...
. Fake and pirate products are produced. For example, there was once a so-called Fake-One Road ( 山寨一條街 ) in China.
This kind of phenomena is not confined to fake products. The mind set of shanzhaiism even extends to advertisements. For example, a shanzhai phone advertisement uses the president of the United States, Obama, to promote its shanzhai products.
Shanzhai culture
The frequent reference to shanzhai cell phones on internet and in traditional media made people start labeling low-cost imitation cultural activities as shanzhai as well. Some of the most well-known events include the Shanzhai National Spring Gala ("山寨春节联欢晚会"), Shanzhai Lecture Room ("山寨百家讲坛"), Shanzhai Olympic Torch Relay ("山寨奥运火炬传递"), and Shanzhai Nobel Prize ("山寨诺贝尔奖"). One thing these events have in common is that they all imitate high-end, popular yet authoritative events in which grass-roots power usually has no participating role.While the purpose of the above mentioned shanzhai events is arguably just for the participants to have fun and to experience being the authority, other shanzhai cultural phenomena, like the shanzhai products, are profit-oriented. For example, some low-end performing agencies will hire people who look like pop stars to perform in rural areas, where people cannot afford to watch the performance of the actual stars. Thus shanzhai Jay Chou
Jay Chou
Jay Chou is a Taiwanese musician, singer-songwriter, music and film producer, actor and director who has won the World Music Award four times. In 1998 he was discovered in a talent contest where he displayed his piano and song-writing skills. Over the next two years, he was hired to compose for...
( "山寨周杰伦"), shanzhai Andy Lau
Andy Lau
Andy Lau MH, JP is a Hong Kong Cantopop singer, actor, and film producer. Lau has been one of Hong Kong's most commercially successful film actors since the mid-1980s, performing in more than 160 films while maintaining a successful singing career at the same time...
("山寨刘德华") and shanzhai Faye Wong
Faye Wong
Faye Wong is a highly successful and influential Chinese singer-songwriter and actress who is usually referred to as a diva . Early in her career she briefly used the stage name Shirley Wong . Born in Beijing, she moved to Hong Kong in 1987 and rose to stardom in the early 1990s by singing...
("山寨王菲") can be seen performing in many underdeveloped places in China.
Shanzhai movies are another profit-driven shanzhai phenomenon. These movies usually have low budgets, yet achieve commercial success by parody
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
ing, making fun of or borrowing elements from high-end Hollywood blockbuster movies. One of the first shanzhai movies is Ning Hao
Ning Hao
Ning Hao is a Chinese film director. Ning studied at the Taiyuan Film School, where he majored in scenic design. He later transferred to the Art Department of Peking University...
’(宁浩)s "Crazy Stone
Crazy Stone
Crazy Stone is a 2006 mainland Chinese black comedy film directed by Ning Hao and produced by Andy Lau. It was immensely popular, earning 6 million RMB in its first week and more than 23 million RMB in total box office in Mainland China, despite its low budget and cast of unknowns...
"(疯狂的石头). It imitates the multi-angle shooting, rapid cutting and stunts that are usually used in Hollywood action movies, yet it retains the grass-roots Chinese set up. With a 3 million Hongkong dollar budget, "Crazy Stone" achieved 22 million-box-office revenue. Following its success, shanzhai movies like "the Big Movie" series ("大电影"系列) and "No.2 in the World" ("天下第二") were made. Some also argue that Hollywood parody movies like "Scary Movie
Scary Movie
Scary Movie is a 2000 comedy-parody film directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans, as part of Warner Bros. Entertainment. It is an American dark comedy which heavily parodies the horror, slasher, and mystery genres...
" are the true inspirational force behind shanzhai movies.
However, similar counterfeiting subcultures are not confined to China. Youtube memes that pose as coming feature film trailers, but are in fact a montage of past films could come from any part of the world, and would fit squarely into the definition of shanzhai.
Critical reception
The heated online debate about whether shanzhai should be encouraged or denounced is arguably due to Ni Ping (倪萍), a well-known CCTVChina Central Television
China Central Television or Chinese Central Television, commonly abbreviated as CCTV, is the major state television broadcaster in mainland China. CCTV has a network of 19 channels broadcasting different programmes and is accessible to more than one billion viewers...
host’s proposal during the "two conferences"(两会) this year. She proposed to establish relevant legislation that will eliminate the shanzhai phenomenon by arguing that the copycat culture associated with shanzhai will stifle genuine creativity and hamper awareness of property rights. While some agree with her, others point out that in order to give objective comment on the shanzhai phenomenon, one has to distinguish shanzhai products from pirated products and shanzhai culture from shanzhai products. They also argue that although many shanzhai culture events manifest themselves as copycat events, some also have true original elements. Western media like the Wall Street Journal and the New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
have reported about the shanzhai phenomenon and presented it as a form of rebellion and resistance to the mainstream culture.
See also
- China Shanzhai Television New Year's GalaCCSTV New Year's GalaCCSTV New Year's Gala is a low-budget, three-hour New Year's Gala program organized by Shi Mengqi of China Country Side TV . It is the grassroots shanzhai version of the official CCTV New Year's Gala.-Organization:...
- ChiPod
- ShenzhenShenzhenShenzhen is a major city in the south of Southern China's Guangdong Province, situated immediately north of Hong Kong. The area became China's first—and one of the most successful—Special Economic Zones...
The capital of "Shanzhai" - World largest Shanzhai Products Origin
Internet video
External links
- ""Analyzing Shanzhai Culture and Tech Gadgets", Shanzai.com
- "Copycat "Shanzhai" Culture Takes on Life of Its Own", Xinhua News Agency
- Must Read Monday: "Shan Zhai Ji" in Google.cn Most Searched List, from IP Dragon blog
- "Mountain village handsets storm market", China Economic Net
- "The Shanzhai Huaxiangji Question", from Timothy Lesle blog
- "First break all the rules, The EconomistThe EconomistThe Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
April 17th 2010 - "Cheap chips off the old block", China Daily
- "'Shanzhai': Faking It for Money or Fun?", China Radio International
- "In the Next Industrial Revolution, Atoms Are the New Bits" By Chris Anderson. January 25, 2010, Wired Magazine Feb 2010
- "In Chinese:163.com:《中国数万网民自发将山寨编入维基百科》专题策划
- The Fake-One Road in China ( 山寨一條街 )
- President Obama on Chinese shanzhai phone Ad
- a generically designed logo
- Shanzhai products in Mainland China but not in Hong Kong
- 鄭明麗 : 喬布斯為何不想去中國？(13 Sept 2010)
- Shanzai Steve Jobs, EngadgetEngadgetEngadget is a multilingual technology blog network with daily coverage of gadgets and consumer electronics. Though on appearance Engadget functions much like a blog and may be defined as such, much of its editorial content takes the form of an online magazine...
October 13, 2010