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Originally Posted by Stensie4JC
My husband is Chinese and I've spent several years living and working in China, so I'd like to make a couple comments and correct a few inaccuracies.
Yes, a qwerty keyboard is used to input Chinese characters. in 1950 in an effort to standardize pronunciation the new Communist government created a system called Pinyin that used "our" alphabet to spell out Chinese words phonetically. The system could not replace the original written system of characters, though, because many words are identical when spelled on Pinyin and the only difference is how each character is written. The vast majority of Chinese words are two characters long, there are only a handful that are one character. There is also an input system that is based on common strokes used in Chinese characters, but it cumbersome and is not very commonly used.
The Kindle copy shown here was most likely reverse engineered by someone who got their hands on one. Chinese companies spend millions of dollars on divisions of engineers whose job it is to do exactly this. In China, what they're doing is not illegal. China is much more lax about patents and intellectual property, and ripping off someone else's device is about as bad as littering. And the Kindle's patent probably only protects it in the US, Amazon probably has not undertaken the lengthy process of obtaining a patent in China. It's an outdated stereotype that these copies will be bad quality, a Chinese company that wants to invest the time and money can often turn out a device equal to or even better than the original, for a lower price.
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1.)Regarding the input systems: many Chinese prefer the stroke based system WuBi to the sound based PinYin. Of course, most Chinese words as they are being used are 2 syllables (and thus 2 characters) but each character (except 呢,阿,喔, etc which are just sound bites) is a word in itself with a meaning. I was just giving some simple explanations without going into much detail, since somebody asked. It would be possible to just use PinYin with tone indicators (as demonstrated by Vietnamese, a closely related language that is written in a latin alphabet these days with a few special characters), but a lot of meaning would be lost this way as so many words sound the same. There are dozens of meanings for ji in the first tone alone, each represented by a different character.
2.)The shoddy quality of knock-offs is not a myth, I have visited many hundreds of factories. It is what I do for a living. Chinese factories making OEM products can produce very high quality products. And remember, many of the real foreign brand named products are produced in factories that are not owned by mainland Chinese. Knock-offs can only sell for a small fraction of the price, they cannot afford to make them as well or better than the originals and they do not aspire to do so. People buying knock-offs know they buy them and they want rock bottom prices. Knock-offs compete with other knockoffs. Also the foreign companies that have OEM products produced in China know how to protect themselves through a system of parts suppliers that work only for them. And don't forget, Chinese brands get knocked off, too so people do not tend to trust brands, but rather the big stores, that sell them -- take it back if you have a problem. Walk around a store in China, no matter what they sell. Most of the items will be priced so low that they sometimes hardly even cover material costs. This is especially bad for industrial products.
Let me give you an example. A Japanese branded, China made, 20 head embroidery machine costs about RMB 400,000 or USD 58000.-. The best Chinese products fetch 100,000. And most of them go as low as 60,000 - 40,000. And they last 1 -2 years, run slow and unreliably, and cannot give you good quality embroidery. What about phones? Chinese made phones look like foreign branded phones, but they sell for 20% the price. Why do the local producers need a big leg up from the government (China has a separate 3G standard to keep everybody else out) if they are so good? Would you want a Chinese branded phone for the same price as foreign branded? How about cars? How many would pass European safety checks? You think the milk scandal was an isolated case?
3.)I agree with some of the things in China Inc., however, this only applies to a very select group of companies. For the vast majority of companies, workers, managers, etc cutting corners is still a way of life. They use the cheapest and shoddiest production equipment they can find, corruption is rampant. Yes, there are exceptions! The Chinese government is trying to change that, giving its own companies assistance with export subsidies and closing off markets. They are on their way up, but it is a long, long way. Costs are rising at an incredible pace and they cannot just rely on being cheap anymore.
As far as the Kindle is concerned, there is no threat. Even though the knockoffs will only cost about USD 40-50 to buy (wholesale), it is the marketing that makes the difference. And while the Kindle is not protected in China (if it was it wouldn't matter much. Even if you hold a patent or trademark in China enforcement is very difficult, especially for a foreign company without a local partner) a knock-off product could not be sold in Amazon's target markets.