Why Is Piracy So Common in China? Confucian Cultural Traditions or Just Money?
Piracy in China has historically been attributed to both cultural factors, such as Confucian values, and structural issues like weak legal enforcement, but recent scholarship suggests Chinese publishers and authors actively developed informal copyright systems for domestic works long before formal laws existed. Despite bilateral treaties and early 20th-century legislation, enforcement remained inconsistent, especially for foreign rights holders. Informal guilds in cities like Shanghai established registration and enforcement mechanisms to protect members' works, while rival centers like Beijing operated independently and became hubs for piracy. Today, concerns persist over China’s copyright framework, particularly regarding digital content and live broadcasts, though improvements have been made in recent decades.
Full article excerpt tap to expand
Why is Piracy so Common in China? Confucian Cultural Traditions or Just Plain Commercial Advantage? (A Historical Perspective) Credit: photo and calligraphy: author I usually write about current international copyright issues but occasionally I dip back into the past to look at where copyright has come from. Sometimes this can be very illuminating in terms of what is happening today. A couple of years ago, I wrote about the thriving pirate book industry in Taiwan back in the 1960s and 1970s when the “ingenious rascals” of Chungking Street in Taipei routinely disassembled, photocopied and reprinted western books, from encyclopedias to medical texts. And all this was perfectly legal under local law in Taiwan at the time. These were the laws of the “Republic of China”, implemented and enforced by the Kuomintang (KMT) regime that administered Taiwan from 1945 on. The KMT had loosely governed China from the overthrow of the Qing (Manchu) dynasty in 1911, through the period of war with the Japanese in the 1930s and 1940s, up until 1949 when the “People’s Republic of China” was proclaimed by Mao Zedong in Beijing. The KMT then decamped to Taiwan (which had been ruled by Japan up to 1945) where the existing Republic of China laws continued to apply. Among these was a copyright regime that protected only works that had a Chinese copyright registration, which was notoriously difficult to obtain. At the time neither the Republic of China (Taipei), nor the People’s Republic (Beijing) was a signatory to the Berne Convention. Respect for copyright in China, or lack thereof, has been a recurring topic over the years. While China is very much in the spotlight for intellectual property (IP) violations, generally these are infringements that relate to trade secrets, patents or trademarks, including forced transfer of IP from companies seeking to invest in China. However, copyright has not been exempt from complaints as repeated reports by the US Trade Representative’s Office clearly show. For example, the most recent USTR Special 301 report on China, issued in April of this year, states that; “It is critical that China address major deficiencies in its copyright framework, such as the lack of deterrent civil damages, ineffective criminal enforcement, and the failure to provide protection against the unauthorized transmission of sports and other live broadcasts.” The report also raised concerns around digital piracy. These relate to distribution of unauthorized audiovisual content and dissemination of unauthorized copies of scientific, technical, and medical journal articles and academic texts, as well as China’s failure to take sustained action against websites, devices or apps that offer or facilitate access to unlicensed content. Mind you, the section on copyright was mild in comparison to the criticisms of China’s failings in a range of other areas of intellectual property. In the past, criticism of China’s copyright practices has ranged from widespread book, DVD and music piracy to failure to establish or enforce effective copyright laws. The lack of effective enforcement remains a concern today. The most recent annual IP index produced by the Global Innovation Policy Center of the US Chamber of Commerce scores China at 2.53 out of a possible 7 in the area of copyright, or 36%. Let’s just say there is lots of room for progress. By way of comparison, Japan’s copyright score was double this. The reason for China’s lack of robust IP protection,…
This excerpt is published under fair use for community discussion. Read the full article at Hugh Stephens Blog.