This study investigates the impact of incubation on the effectiveness of copycat funds in the largest emerging market, China. The empirical findings are as follows. First, unlike the U.S., the overall findings exclude the possibility of successfully copying equity funds in China. Second, an advisory company’s fund incubation makes it harder to free-ride on new funds than old funds. Third, incubation is generally undertaken for new funds in a bullish market so that copycat returns of new-minus-old funds have a negative correlation with market returns. Fourth, the effect of long Chinese Lunar Year holiday impairs the performance of primitive funds, consequently, copying is effective in January and February. Finally, logit analysis shows that copying is successful for those funds with low performance and low turnover ratios.