Friday, April 23, 2010
Working in Beijing a few years ago, one free morning I wandered down the street toward the Forbidden City. As usual, a virtual army of street venders, scores of them, shouted at me to buy their pirated DVDs — movies still in the theaters, for $1 each. Policemen walking the beat took no particular notice.
Journalist friends in Beijing right now say the vendors are still there, in even greater numbers. Sometimes they are selling movies that have not even reached the theaters yet.
This month, federal auditors published a study on “efforts to quantify the economic effects of counterfeit and pirated goods.” Over 36 single-spaced pages, the Government Accountability Office demonstrated that it’s impossible to know how much money is lost, how many jobs are eliminated, how much economic damage piracy actually causes.
But buried deep in that report, and accorded little note, is this irrefutable fact: The United States Customs and Border Patrol found that “seized counterfeit goods are dominated by products from China. During fiscal years 2004 through 2009, China accounted for 77 percent of the aggregate value of goods seized in the United States.” The closest competitor, Hong Kong, a special province of China, accounted for 7 percent. India ranked third. It provided just 2 percent.
Piracy problem
Whenever visiting American officials meet with their Chinese counterparts, the piracy problem is always among the long list of problematic issues they discuss. But nothing ever seems to change. The cops walking the beat still stroll past DVD pirates and take no particular note.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, an inter-governmental group based in Paris, also concluded in a report that “China is the single largest source” for counterfeit goods.
China is a lost-cause state for software manufacturers. Eighty percent of Chinese computer users are believed to be using pirated copies of Microsoft Windows. As if that were not troubling enough, last fall a Chinese court forbade Microsoft from selling any version of Windows in China, saying the company was in violation of copyright restrictions — for the use of a certain character font. Microsoft appealed.
Pharmaceutical, toy, apparel, consumer electronics, auto parts, watch and weaponry manufacturers, among many others, have similar stories to tell. Everyone in all of those industries also knows that the government’s usual insistence on joint-venture businesses in China is in large part so that the Chinese participants can copy the foreign technology or innovation and begin making their own knock-off versions.
And then, everyone also knows, that Chinese knock-off medications and pet food shipped worldwide in recent years injured and killed people and pets. And don’t forget about that toxic drywall used to build many thousands of American homes. Across the United States this month, courts are awarding damages to families suffering illnesses caused by caustic chemicals embedded in their homes’ walls. But the local representatives of the Chinese manufacturers generally are not showing up for their court dates. As usual, China is facing no serious repercussions.
All of that raises the question: How many diplomatic, political and commercial affronts is the rest of the world expected to accept from China before deciding that it is simply a renegade state? This month, the West is pressing China to approve U.N. sanctions on Iran to dissuade it from further enriching uranium to nuclear-weapons grade quality. Well, this month the Wall Street Journal reported that a government-owned Chinese company had actually helped Iran buy rarified equipment used to refine uranium to nuclear-weapons grade quality.
Global assaults
Cyber-attacks on Google, currency manipulation, greenhouse-gas emissions, cash loans and gifts to genocidal leaders like Omar al-Bashir in Sudan. No other nation assaults the world with such widespread, menacing, outlaw behavior. Is the West supposed to sit still and swallow hard through all of this? Perhaps it’s time to think about isolation and sanctions for China. Instead, the Chinese have the West cowed; Western leaders seem to be afraid to act or even to complain. China holds billions in Western debt; it wields a veto on the U.N. Security Council.
Joel Brinkley is a former Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent for The New York Times and now a professor of journalism at Stanford University. McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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