Beijing - With its slogan "Disneyland is too far," Beijing's Shijingshan Amusement Park features a replica of Cinderella's Castle, staff dressed like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and other Disney images.
None of this is authorised by Disney but that has not stopped the state-owned park from creating its own counterfeit version of the Magic Kingdom in a brazen example of the sort of open and widespread copyright piracy that has Washington fuming.
The United States announced on Monday it would file a case at the World Trade Organisation over "rampant" copyright piracy in China, a practice which US companies say deprives them of billions of dollars each year.
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But 31-year-old housewife Zhang Li betrays a typical Chinese attitude on the issue while chasing her young son around the park.
"I don't understand why that is such a big problem. Shouldn't others be able to use those characters besides (Disney)?" she asks.
Her view is common in a country where lax societal and law enforcement attitudes toward copyright protection has seen the counterfeit goods industry become a key part of the national economy.
A US Congressional panel says China's own data suggests such goods account for 15 to 20 percent of goods made in the country.
Such numbers seem hard to dispute in Beijing, where one can spend a morning at an imitation Disney amusement park, have lunch at a KFC knock-off, shop for fake foreign-brand fashions in the afternoon and relax at night with a DVD of a Hollywood film that is still in the theatres in the United States.
"It's part of living in China," Canadian businessman Brian Dugood says while browsing fake Armani jackets at the Yashow Clothing Market, one of several multi-story bazaars in Beijing where a range of counterfeit brands are allowed to be sold openly to Chinese and foreigners alike by pushy merchants.
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