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Piracy in China of any kind has always been rampant and its never easy to control due to the size of this nation. Anything that can be copied will be copied so long there is a market for it. It ranged from pirated copies of Spiderman 3 DVD to watchmaker brands to even automobiles.

The almost look alike between the Mercedes C vs Chinese designed Geely Merrie 300 above are just blatant copies of their more established counterparts. Spot the difference with more pictures below.

Rolls-Royce Phantom vs Hongqi HQD

BMW 7 series vs BYD F6. Uh, Brilliance.

BMW vs BYD. Well, it's more Barack-ish than the German version.

Honda CRV vs Laibao SRV

Toyota Prado vs Dadi Shuttle

Smart vs Chinese Smart

Maybe the Chinese economy isn't quite as creative as its free-market competitors. So what? They're looking out for the little people, aren't they? Their copies of capitalist products are just as good even if they're not very original, right?

Uh, no. They're not. Remember that cool luxo-cruiser above called the "Brilliance"? Here's another angle on it:

Ouchie. Do you think the driver's okay?


Unfortunately, he's not okay. He's a fried dumpling.

And here's an excerpt from a European road test report:

Germany's ADAC, a cross between AAA and the IIHS, has performed a crash test on the Chinese-built Brilliance BS6 under Euro NCAP guidelines and the results aren't pretty, to say the least. The car earned just one star for passenger safety -- Euro NCAP uses a single rating that combines the results of front offset and side-impact crash tests that are identical to those performed by the IIHS. As the ADAC puts it, "The midsize sedan is as far from reaching optimal safety standards as Peking is from Potsdam." The BS6 thus becomes the second Chinese car to score dismally in German crash tests, with the first being the infamous Jiangling Landwind.

You're not familiar with the Jiangling Landwind crash test? Allow us to bring you, uh, up to speed.

You see, a command economy like the one Obama thinks we need can force capitalist-style manufacturing organizations to produce new products very quickly. But if they're reporting to the government instead of the consumer market, important things can be forgotten along the way. For example, it's possible to make a lot of cheap, low-quality rip-offs of high-quality originals. It's also possible to torpedo the whole tradition of safety and utility in favor of politically correct deathtraps like the Smart Car (and, yes, the even deadlier Chinese Smart Car.) That's where the irony comes in. The oppressive, exploitative free market eventually optimizes the trade-off between cost and safety in response to consumer buying decisions, while the much more "people"-oriented government-controlled economy tends to optimize only its own public relations targets, whatever they might be. And very very sadly, authoritarian governments all seem to live by an odd retro code.

"It is better to look good than feel good." Especially when the world's watching.

Funny how that works, ain't it? Soulless capitalism ultimately opts for safety while the dictatorship of the proletariat dictates terms that kill the proletariat. I mean, do you want your daughter driving a Smart Car alongside all those tractor trailers on the Turnpike? Only a socialist would be so heartless as to make you do that to her.

Catch up to China? Let's hope the market doesn't let Obama pursue that particular dream. Please. If he insists on following that example, we could get good at a lot of useless, stupid, imitative crap. Which you can enjoy if you want, but this I know: I don't want one of these things ever.

Sorry if that taints your Obama-Aura or something.

I said I was sorry.