Is Beijing's Winter Olympics 2022 song a Frozen rip off?

From smartphones to designer handbags to cars even, counterfeiting has long been a part of Chinese industry, where trademarks can be a slippery concept.

But a new accusation of intellectual borrowing has the potential to cause embarrassment at the highest levels. Keen (and not-so-keen) listeners have noticed that Beijing's Winter Olympics song sounds suspiciously like a runaway hit from the Disney musical Frozen.

Beijing was awarded the 2022 games despite the city's lack of snow.

Chinese business magazine Caijing Online, cited by the New York Times, analysed the instrumentation in the songs and said they had similar prelude chords and an eight-beat introduction, and run at almost exactly the same tempo.

The New York Times approached both the Beijing Games' organising committee and Disney but both declined to comment. The Oscar-winning Frozen is the biggest animated feature of all time, having taken more than $1.3 bn (£790m) at the box office worldwide.