Rovio head Peter Vesterbacka was among the marquis speakers at the recent Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing, where he announced his intentions for over 100 million downloads of their smash hit Angry Birds in China by year’s end (they now claim over 140 million downloads worldwide) and added that theirs is now the “number three most copied brand in China.”

Considering the sheer volume of local firms copping other people’s ideas, concepts and designs, the Finnish firm’s claim is arguably dubious — it’s hard to imagine how they arrived at (and on what stats he based) this conclusion.

Nevertheless China certainly has its share of Angry Bird knockoffs and the future looks rosy indeed for Rovio.

But as any good Chinese nationalist would claim who’s to say Zhong Guo didn’t come up with the idea first?

The Chinese press (via micgadget, Shanghaiist and wantchinatimes) reports on a  recent archeological discovery in Shanxi now on display in Taiyuan:

“According to Chutian Metropolitan Daily, fans of the popular game were surprised to find an ancient Chinese wine vessel at the Shanxi Provincial Museum bearing a great resemblance to the avian fighter. The owl-shaped bronze vessel was made in the Shang Dynasty (1766-1122 BCE) and is now on display in the museum in Taiyuan, the provincial capital.”

We’ll leave you to draw your own theories (I’m leaning towards the same aliens responsible for the Nazca Lines in Peru), but one thing’s for sure — Rovio definitely wasn’t the first to come up with the prototype for surly swine: