The man who was selling fake Rolex watches for $1 in Beijing's Forbidden City the other day is hardly an endangered species, but China is quietly starting to win plaudits for its efforts to protect intellectual property.
Last month police detained the operator of a website, "Tomato Garden," from which millions of pirated versions of Microsoft software had been downloaded, according to media reports, while in the spring courts passed trademark judgements in favour of Italian chocolate maker Ferrero and luxury goods label Gucci.
China is becoming a bit less of a counterfeiters' paradise. "Obviously there's a ways to go, but I think there's been a vast improvement," said Lee Sands, a former chief US trade negotiator with China. "It's very clear that there was a change in the mentality of the government."
Leaning against piracy fits in with China's desire to cast off its image of a country where exploited workers toil for a pittance in Dickensian factories that turn the air and water black with the pollution they discharge. In the government's vision, "Made in China" should not stand for knock-off DVDs and artificial Christmas trees but for clean, creative, cutting-edge industries. After all, this is the country that dazzled the world with its Olympic stadiums and is preparing for its first space walk next week.
China may be the workshop of the world but it creates little value itself. In 2006, the export value of a 30 gigabyte video-model iPod assembled in China for Apple Inc was about $150, but the value added by Chinese producers was just $4, according to a National Bureau of Economic Research paper last year. China, not surprisingly, wants to earn more from the sweat of its labour by capturing the rents that come from designing new products and building brands.
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