China builds $940 million carbon copy of Austrian town.

[Nin-Yaaban]

Can you enforce copyright over an entire town?

 

The BBC News reports that the Alpine village of Hallstatt, Austria — a major tourist attraction and UNESCO World Heritage Site — has been replicated in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, down to the clock towers and the steep, pointed roofs atop wooden houses.

 

“The population is amused that such a little place of the region Salzkammergut is important enough to get a copy,” Hallstatt mayor Alexander Scheutz said in the clip. (You can view it here.)

 

The project cost $940 million, according to China Daily, and was conceived by a local “mining tycoon.”

 

To be fair, the project was conceived as a tourist attraction, not a living village. And industry tycoons in developing nations have a long, storied history of imitating the Old Country, for personal or financial means. But never on this scale.

 

It’s certainly not a bit of news that will help China deflect a reputation that it can’t innovate on its own, and it raises all sorts of questions about intellectual property and urbanization. (What if China, flush with cash, were indeed to copy one of the world’s cities? How would it respond?)

 

On the other hand, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery — especially when those cultural ties are with an increasingly powerful global economic force.

 

Photo: The real deal. (Oliver Wald/Flickr)

 

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[Somali philosopher]

somaliya hadey fuundi u baahantahay china ha soo kireysato. raqiis weye sifiicana wey u shaqeeyaan.

wadada xamar ilaa hargeysa ayagaa dhiseen wali wey fiicantahay lakin tii uu talyaniga disay labaatansano ka hor be burburtay.

[burahadeer]

who doesn't copy? cars,planes,weapons,medicine etcetra.