THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 12, 1995 TAG: 9502100038
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 56 lines
We have talked and talked with China about piracy of American intellectual property. It is time to act, and the Clinton administration is acting.
Washington has slapped Beijing with punitive tariffs on bicycles, cellular phones, furniture and other products. The Chinese have responded with tariffs on cigarettes, alcohol, film, CDs and videotape.
But Beijing has also called for a return to the bargaining table. Clearly, a trade war is as unattractive to them as to us. But the United States must stand firm. The Chinese have a history of seeing how far they can push, and now is the time to tell them they can go no farther.
At stake are billions of dollars in copyright and patent-protected products - computer software, entertainment products and the like.
These are products in which the United States leads the world, and we can ill-afford allowing rip-off artists in the Third World to pirate our innovations and to profit unlawfully from them.
It is estimated that China steals $1 billion a year in intellectual property for its own domestic consumption. That doesn't count what it manufactures and sells abroad. Tough laws dating from 1992 are on China's books, but they have gone unenforced.
Some of the worst culprits are state-owned businesses. That mocks Beijing's claim that enforcement has failed because China has no tradition of copyright and no experience enforcing its laws. China has proved skillful at enforcing a lot more Draconian laws than these.
Of course, there's nothing new about industrializing nations cheerfully ripping off others. The United States wrote a disgraceful chapter of its own in the 19th century when Charles Dickens and many other continental authors were regularly pirated and paid not a penny for their work by American printers.
Eventually, when we developed authors - like Mark Twain - that Europeans wanted to read, the trade in intellectual property became a two-way street and both sides had an interest in uniform laws and enforcement.
Just as we had to join the community of nations and play by the rules, so will China. But it won't do so unless pressed. Some businesses eager to invest in China - Ford and GM, for instance - hope this issue will simply go away. But the administration mustn't waver. Too much is at stake. The world's most populous country can't be allowed to pirate with impunity nor to sell arms to dangerous regimes in violation of international agreements nor to commit grim human-rights abuses without suffering consequences.
Intellectual property rights is a fine place to draw the line. It's time for China to shape up, And to their credit, the Republicans led by Newt Gingrich have backed Clinton and trade-representative Mickey Kantor in taking this stand. by CNB