China refutes 'IPR enforcement deteriorating'

BEIJING - China's Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) enforcement is not deteriorating and China is making greater efforts on IPR, said Liu Binjie, director of the General Administration of Press and Publication, Wednesday.

2010 China Business Climate Survey Report released in April by the American Chamber of Commerce in China said 66 percent of respondents of the survey found China's enforcement of IPR had stayed the same or deteriorated, and even after the Special IPR Campaign there had been no improvement in China's administration of IPR.

Liu, also the director of the National Copyright Administration, said at the Diplomatic Conference on the Protection of Audiovisual Performances that China had noticed the report and exchanged ideas with the American Chamber of Commerce.

"The statement in the report is apparently not true," he said. "China launched a special campaign to combat IPR infringements in the latter half of 2010 and then developed it into a regular mechanism. China has made great progress in legalizing the use of software and reduced software piracy."

Liu also pointed out that software infringements in downloading audio and video from the Internet was the major problem and Chinese government was making efforts with its policies, laws and technologies to solve the problem.

Francis Gurry, Director General of World Intellectual Property Organization, presented at the conference.

"What is at stake generally, with respect to creative works and the Internet, is a question of how we are going to finance cultural production in a digital environment," he said.

There needs to be a balance between encouraging investment in cultural production and sharing works and the benefit of the works, he added.