Over the past decade countless media reports and publications have highlighted the problem of goods that are made or processed in China. A great deal of the international coverage is negative; even within China many consumers exhibit mixed feelings about Chinese products. Faked in China represents a different kind of response to the ubiquity of the “Made in China” brand. The use of the vernacular expression “faked” is symptomatic of the fact that many products “made in China” contravene intellectual property laws. While “faked in China” ostensibly plays to a negative connotation, the book advances an alternative understanding by which people can make, remake and circulate their own “versions.”
Fan Yang shows how counterfeit culture underpins a variety of manifestations ranging from physical objects to independent cinema to bazaars. Examples are largely drawn from popular culture. In re-evaluating China's global “brand” reputation, Yang adopts a textual approach, utilizing a wide variety of critical theory. There are multiple sources in Chinese and English. The texts include television programmes, TV commercials, cinema, news reports, blogs, interviews and online forums.
The book has four sections, a concluding essay and three short appendices. The first chapter, entitled “From made in China to created in China: nation branding and the global-national imaginary,” begins with writer-journalist Sara Bongiorni's book A Year without Made in China, allowing Yang to introduce China's manufacturing economy and its repercussions on trade relations with the US. She contrasts a CNN documentary criticizing China's safety records and product recalls with a China Central Television (CCTV) special called Believe in Made in China. Yang shows how the state threw its weight behind Chinese products, effectively becoming a kind of brand manager.
The remainder of the chapter turns to an alternative discourse: “created in China.” Yang says that a national policy mandate surfaced after 2001 that was called “From Made in China to Created in China.” However, she provides no evidence for this policy. In fact, no national policy by this name existed at that time, nor is there one now. Certainly support for creativity was evident among education reformers, in design and advertising circles, and was widespread within the media, which is subject to constant censorship. A slogan of this name was briefly used by a Beijing-based organization called the Creative China Industrial Alliance in 2004 (I was associated with its inception).
Chapter two deals with the most conspicuous manifestation of “faked in China”: shanzhai production. The term shanzhai refers to knock-off products, copycats and local versions of international brands. Three instances are documented: shanzhai cell phones, the online archive of shanzhai artefacts, and news coverage of shanzhai by CCTV. Yang says that whereas the state actively constructs the national brand image for the people, shanzhai, being a grassroots phenomenon, is actually more representative of the “people.”
Chapter three examines film culture, specifically the low budget film Crazy Stone (2006), directed by Ning Hao. The film is considered as “an enactment of China's counterfeit film culture,” not in the sense that the film is counterfeit, although there are accusations that its narrative style was a copycat of the films of Guy Ritchie, but because fans collectively urged others to buy a legitimate copy rather than a pirated one.
Chapter four examines Beijing's Silk Street Market in Beijing's Chaoyang district, a location known to many visitors and tourists to Beijing since the 1980s. Silk Street Market has undergone a number of makeovers and takeovers, with its identity, brand equity and merchant activity subject to closer supervision. The chapter describes contestations over Xiushui Street trademarks, somewhat ironic considering the street's original history as a place to find good “fakes.”
The final section, called “Cultural imperialism and the Chinese dream” ties Xi Jinping's “Chinese dream” to the “American dream” via journalist Thomas Friedman in the first instance, and through the Peter Chan directed film American Dreams in China, about disputes over copyright in a language testing business run by Chinese nationals.
While Faked in China provides a multi-textured account of counterfeit culture, I feel the author has missed an opportunity to critique state power. As mentioned above, there was no national policy mandate on “created in China.” From 2000 onwards the party-state promoted the term cultural industries (wenhua chanye), which was directly associated with national cultural security (guojia wenhua anquan). Creativity (chuangyi) was rarely sighted in national documents despite its regular appearance in provincial, municipal and local district planning documents that refer to “cultural creative industries.” The alternative national development discourse, innovation (chuangxin), promises economic dividends without social disruption. The fact that disruptive, or grassroots creativity exists, and continues to defy political attempts to regulate its manifestations, illustrates its highly contested nature.
Despite some minor flaws Faked in China is an outstanding and highly original work. I am sure it will become required reading in cultural studies disciplines as well as in media and communications studies.
