China has caught on to the fact that it doesn’t enjoy a stellar reputation over here as a manufacturer of quality goods, especially after the tainted food and product stories of the past few years, so it’s doing what any good profit-minded business would do: running an image rehabilitation campaign.

Oddly, though, the campaign emphasizes that quality Chinese-made goods consist of non-Chinese design, intellectual property, or engineering.

Commercials for the campaign just ended a six-week run on cable networks in the United States, Europe and Asia. One of the 30-second spots shows a couple of teen girls dancing at a bus stop using an MP3 player “Made in China with software from Silicon Valley.” Another shows a jogger tying his sneakers “Made in China with American sports technology.”

The point is to inform consumers that Chinese goods are not 100% Chinese, in a manner of speaking.

Here’s a low-quality version of the ad described above:

“New ad campaign touts ‘made in China'” [USA Today] (Thanks to Snarkysnake!)

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