Chinese companies have adopted names that sound similar to top U.S. brands in an effort to juice sales.

In the hotel business, there are Haiyatt and Marvelot hotels, which have nothing to do with Hyatt and Marriott of the United States, The New York Times reports.

Chinese consumers generally regard Western brands as higher in quality than their Chinese counterparts are, and this assumption is often correct.

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The Chinese knockoffs often compete against the real thing. For example, the city of Suzhou already has a Haiyatt hotel, and this spring will see the opening of a Hyatt Regency there too.

There's a whole different attitude toward copycatting in China than in the United States.
"Throughout Chinese history, skillful reproduction by artists, poets and crafts workers has been highly regarded," William Alford, director of the East Asian Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School, tells The Times.

"Copying successful brands is a backdoor scheme to make money, and lots of unscrupulous people are doing what they know is wrong, but one of the reasons they can have some success doing it is that there is cultural ambivalence."

Meanwhile, star economist Nouriel Roubini of New York University says the slowdown of China's economy represents one of the biggest threats to the world economy. Chinese GDP growth totaled 7.4 percent in the first quarter, the lowest in 18 months.

"While the consensus believes china will have a soft landing, growth of about 7 percent, my reading of the data is that . . . growth may be 6.5 percent next year," he tells Bloomberg TV.

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