Chinese bogus books are commonly treated as matters of copyright infringement. Using
the example of two of the Harry Potter fakes that were published in the PRC
in 2002, it is argued that there are sufficient grounds to consider these fakes as
pieces of art in themselves. As fakes, they simultaneously employ two strategies:
they use the value of the original (as a commercial tool to increase readership),
but at the same time, they want to break out of this narrow frame in order to be
recognized as a fake, that is, as an original that only appears as a counterfeit. On
this basis, it becomes obvious that these Harry Potter texts mirror recent
trends of both popular culture and elite discussions. Using the
Orientalism/Occidentalism framework, this article shows how the different notions of
“China” and “the West” employed can be seen
as indications for the “Chineseness” of the text: the West is
nothing but an image to convey a message on the state of affairs in China.
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