We’ve been bringing you iPhone clones galore since the Apple iPhone was first announced and we are not going to stop just because the New York Times has published a scathing feature on Chinese iPhone knock-offs.

The phone’s sleek lines and touch-screen keyboard are unmistakably familiar. So is the logo on the back. But a sales clerk at a sprawling electronic goods market in this Chinese coastal city admits what is clear upon closer inspection: this is not the Apple iPhone; this is the Hi-Phone.

Heck, they even mispelled our beloved HiPhone, putting a hyphen after Hi, as if to emphasize its mild, unassuming nature. We get that knock-offs are very easy to manufacture:

“Five years ago, there were no counterfeit phones,” says Xiong Ting, a sales manager at Triquint Semiconductor, a maker of mobile phone parts, while visiting Shenzhen. “You needed a design house. You needed software guys. You needed hardware design. But now, a company with five guys can do it. Within 100 miles of here, you can find all your suppliers.”

They’re also dirt cheap. A Shanzai (Shenzhen knockoff phone) could cost as little as $20 per unit to make. [nyt]

After five years Shanzai phones take 20% of the Chinese mobile market, and we assume it continues to be a growing market especially after Chinese deregulators stopped requiring licenses for cell phone manufacturers.. In today’s economic downturn, Chinese mobile clones are in a very good position. Both foreign and local “original” manufacturers are taking the hit. One reason may be quality: “Our phone is even better than the iPhone,” says Liu Zeyu, a Meizu salesman in Shenzhen. “Our goal is to create a phone that makes Chinese proud.”

Dean Baker on the American Prospect has a different view on knock-offs. HiPhone is not a fake iPhone because it is a HiPhone. Get it?