China shanzhais the Humvee

    "Shanzhai" is all the rage in China.It literally means: "mountain village", and used to refer to bandit strongholds beyond government control.

    Now the term is being applied to anything which is counterfeit, or which has been tinkered with and modified into something flashier.Here are some pictures of things which have been shanzhai-ed: 
  

    If it reminds you of a Humvee, that’s because Dongfeng openly admits it was “based on” the Humvee with “some minor modifications”.

    Before adding, perplexingly, that it took six years of development (ahem, careful copying) to get it right.

    I was amused, then, to see a piece of propaganda on Xinhua the other day saying that the Mengshi had “surpassed” the Humvee in “12 out of 15 major battlefield performance indices”.

    It didn’t say which they might be, although the piece said the Mengshi had passed “airdropping, high altitude, extreme heat and cold weather” tests.

    I just want to know: What are the three areas in which the shanzhai Humvee did not surpass the original? And how did they not manage to beat the unwieldy and out-of-date Humvee on all counts after six years of trying?