Okay, ‘released’ isn’t exactly the right word. But the now-mythic white iPhone 4 has been spotted in China, and it can be yours for the bargain price of up to 8000 Yuan ($1204) for the 16GB model. I don’t even wanna know how much the 64GB goes for.

But considering China’s reputation as the land of knock-offs, can this be the real thing? Well, you be the judge. The boxes are marked ‘for internal use only’, and from the pictures, they’re certainly more real than any Chinese counterfeit version I’ve ever seen, by a large margin. Frankly, I’m willing to believe this is the real deal. It’s just being sold by less-than-unshady means.

Here’s some further proofpudding, submitted to Giz-China by a user who absolutely had to have it in white. There’s iTunes open, with the white iPhone icon. Yeah, this could be an elaborate photoshop, but as a man who has Photoshop open 16 hours a day, I can pretty much tell you out of hand that this isn’t one.

So what do you think? Is the white iPhone alive and well in China? Would you be willing to pay 1200 bucks for a different colour of phone? Are you that stupid patient?