Welcome to the modern era of copying in China, in which sophisticated proprietors of knockoff stores and chains are targeting increasingly sophisticated Chinese consumers with store experiences and customer service extremely similar to the real thing, down to the helpful store maps, coupons, shopping bags and employee uniforms.

The imitation retailers and restaurants go beyond the simple fakes of consumer goods that have long been abundant in China.

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Although the iPad is unproven at market, some Chinese electronics manufacturers are betting that it will succeed in doing just what Jobs foresees. And they’re cloning the hell out of Apple’s (AAPL) device.

Among them, Teso debuted two tablets at a Chinese trade show last week–an Intel (INTC) Atom-based “iPhone-style” tablet that runs Windows 7 and an ARM-based device running Android–and Yinlips plans an iPad look-alike with a six-inch E-Ink display.

Meanwhile, Micro-Star International will show off an Android-based tablet with a 10-inch screen at the Computex electronics show in June.

Then there’s Asus, which is prepping two iPad rivals for launch in the coming months, one for Android and another for Windows. Asus, of course, is the company that earlier this month disparaged the iPad as “one big screen iPhone” and said it was something it could improve.

Finally, Shenzhen Huayi expects big things from its ridiculous-looking iPad knockoff. “We basically made the designs to look like a jumbo iPhone,” President Xiong Yiwei told Korea IT Times. “The profit margin of counterfeit cell phones reached up to 30 percent in the past, but only 10 yuan (US$1.50) profit margin is made per one product. We had a great expectation of netbooks last year, but only 100 yuan (US$15) profit margin was made. The success of iPhonish product is a matter of life or death for us.”

No wonder microprocessor outfit ARM is predicting we’ll see some 50 iPad clones by year’s end.

[Image credits: midbbs.cn, imp3.net and Shanzai]

Apple (AAPL) declined to say what other carriers the company might be talking to, but it’s a safe bet that if the company is in discussions with a second carrier, it’s China Mobile. After all, the two companies have talked about a deal before, and while those negotiations stumbled repeatedly over issues like revenue-sharing and hardware localization, it’s hard to believe that Apple would turn its back on the world’s largest wireless carrier.

There are 600 million cellphone users in China and 415 million of them are China Mobile subscribers. That’s a hell of an opportunity to pass up, no matter how difficult negotiating with the company might be.

According to China Mobile CEO Wang Jianzhou, Apple hasn’t passed it up. During the company’s quarterly earnings call on Aug. 20, Jianzhou said specifically that talks between the two companies continue. Just what they might involve is anyone’s guess, although Dan Butterfield at iPhonAsia speculates that they would likely be for an EDGE 2G-only version of iPhone.

“No matter the future of TD-SCDMA, China Mobile will maintain their EDGE 2G network, which has broad coverage and a clear signal throughout major urban zones in China,” Butterfield writes. “In my view, EDGE 2G could be the bridge between Apple and China Mobile. There are hundreds of millions of low-salaried wireless consumers in China who aspire to iPhone. Many have in fact already purchased cheap Shanzhai (iClone) knock-offs. But Shanzhai iPhones are not reliable and quickly become landfill. A low-priced ‘real’ Apple iPhone running EDGE 2G only, might sell by the tens of millions.”

“Copyrights are not supposed to protect board games,” intellectual property attorney Pete Kinsella told CNet News.com. “What copyrights protect is the expression of an idea rather than the idea itself. The law allows people to design around things, and particularly when there isn’t patent protection, the law has great incentive to design around things by making things somewhat different.”

Which is an unfortunate state of affairs for Hasbro (HAS): The newly launched Wordscraper has, in a very short time, already signed up 3,569 users. And it will surely gather more as word of its debut spreads. What will the game company do now? What will it do if Wordscraper’s creators release it as a true board game?