Pakuri Tengoku... Japan (?)

There are only two things you can count on when watching Japanese TV.

1. Every variety program, if left without a main topic for more than a few weeks, will eventually turn into a show where you watch talents eating food, exclaiming how awesome it all is.
2. Every news program seems to be required by law to do a special on Chinese fakes, usually with the subtitle 中国：パクリ天国？ (China - Ripoff Kingdom?)

For the most part I have to agree with them. Just walking around China and you're sure to find a bunch of fakes (this pic is from Hong Kong - and while it's not an exact ripoff you get the idea).

But then again, walk around Tokyo and you can find the same thing. Maybe not as blatantly, but head back into Ameyoko in Ueno and you'll definitely see stacks of Rorex watches among other obvious fakes on sale. It has gotten a lot better - when I first got Japan you could find fakes near just about any major station and now you really have to look - but they're still there.

Listening to the news programs, you hear all the time about the billions of dollars lost to people buying fakes, and so on and so on, but is that really the case?

What I mean is, is China's seeming propensity (according to the news) to copy everything in retail and as a government turn a blind eye to it, actually so bad?

I don't think so. And there are 3 simple reasons.

1. Not every fake sold is a a loss for the real maker. Just because you have some guy in China buying an iPhone 5 (?) that looks a lot like the real iPhone 4S before it went on sale, doesn't mean that guy would've bought a real Apple phone instead had the fake not existed. He probably couldn't afford it, and if he could, he would've bought the real thing, because half the point of owning luxury products is to show off that you have them. No one feels proud showing off a fake Rorex on your wrist - you feel like a dumbass.
   
2. Fakes are free advertising. When someone sees a fake Gucci bag and how cool it is, what do they yearn for? A fake of their own? I don't think so. They want the real thing. If they never have enough money to get one they won't buy one anyway, so the fake didn't hurt the real company. But if they do get enough money they buy the real one - meaning Gucci just benefitted from the fake. The same is true of any item.
   
   Apple has complained a lot about Samsung and others copying the iPhone (to the point of suing them), but it's the same thing in many ways. When someone sees a cool-ass Samsung Galaxy (which I own, and to me does feel in many ways like an iPhone imitation - I won't go so far as to say copy), what do they think in their mind, if they don't know anything about phones? I know they don't think man, I need that cool Samsung Galaxy. What they're thinking is man, I need a smartphone. And to people new to the market the biggest selling item defines the category - hence the Galaxy becomes an advertisement for an iPhone because it's the one they see ads on TV for and it is the best known model.
   
3. A fake that stimulates the market benefits everyone. Take Meizu. It started out making blatant copies of iPhones. But their newer products now are better in some ways than the real thing. Being one-upped by a "fake" has got to hurt, and it forces Apple and the other top dogs to keep going. The Meizu now is a really high end phone that's got enough of it's own direction that you can't really even call it a fake.
   
   But even with outright copies, the existence of these cheap fakes make more and more people able to buy them. This makes the market grow, often in areas where there was no market to begin with (China didn't get iPhones for 2 years but fakes were floating around since almost the get go). And as in any industry, the bigger the market, the more the top players benefit.

Ok, so this post has gotten a bit long now, so I'll wrap it up. Are fakes a problem? When they take away from actual sales, yes. But I've heard several times on Japanese TV that fakes are going to eventually kill the Chinese economy. Sounds like a lot of crying about something that isn't that big of a problem. IMO if anything the "holy shit fakes are ruining the economy" crowd should instead focus on game, movie and music piracy - which tho also very highly overblown, is a problem but also one that can be addressed.