The Chinese have cloned an entire Ikea store

A furniture store in the Chinese city of Kunming appears to be an exact copy of the famous Ikea stores, according to The India Times, today.

After an entire theme park, modeled after Disneyland, was closed down last spring and our report on the exposure of a chain of fake Apple Stores last week, we can safely say a whole new trend is emerging in China.
After years of massive counterfeiting of consumer goods and clothing, the Chinese now seem to focus on the imitation of Western retail and commercial formulas.

Unlike the Apple Stores, which had been copied so well that even the staff were not aware that they were selling junk, this "Chikea" still bothered to adopt another name. The Chinese yellow-blue furniture paradise is called "11 Furniture" and everything in the store looks exactly like the famous Swedish formula.

It is not yet clear what will happen with 11 Furniture, but it is clear that the Chinese government cannot abandon their race against piracy any time soon. These discoveries come at a most inconvenient time for the government. Just very recently, the Ministry of Trade has decided to downscale their pirate hunt, because they had established a significant reduction of illegal copying. Meanwhile, intellectual property infringements in the People's Republic remain notorious.

Reference: The Times of India (Economic Times)