Smartening up China's image

The Palace Museum announced on Friday that it will stop selling its popular "Gege" dolls, based on a Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) princess, after they were said to be too similar to a product made by a foreign manufacturer, especially in terms of their head-body proportion and joints, which led to allegations they were the products of intellectual property rights theft.

In fact, the head and clothing of these dolls were originally designed by the museum's Taobao designers, but their body design was with the authorization of a cooperative partner. This means whether or not the dolls involved an IPR infringement has yet to be confirmed.

In the meantime, the swift removal of these dolls from the shelves by the Palace Museum store deserves praise. The store's rapid response to the claims shows its respect for the IPR of other brands.

Without full self-innovation, any products, no matter how good they look, will lack market confidence and courage. The embarrassment of the Palace Museum has also been experienced by some domestic cellphone manufacturers, many of whom were found to be imitating the exterior appearance of Samsung and Apple products.

At a time when the country is making all-out efforts to implement the Made in China 2025 strategy of applying smart technologies to upgrade manufacturing and achieve innovation-driven development, China should increase its efforts to achieve its own distinctive products and brands by increasing its input into R&D and offering multifaceted support to innovative enterprises.

It is hoped the Palace Museum's cute Gege dolls will be on sale again soon with a new design that is clearly its own.

Chinese products must have their own core technologies and designs in the future.