The Ministry of Culture Tuesday destroyed 27.5 million illegal audio and video recordings in major Chinese cities.

In Nanjing, the capital of east China's Jiangsu Province, 11.2 million illegal discs were destroyed.

The recordings are just part of the 43.45 million pirated and smuggled discs that cultural authorities have seized in the first half of this year, said Vice-Minister of Culture Zhao Weisui in Nanjing.

In May and June this year, the ministry launched a crackdown on markets selling illegal audiovisual products.

Last year, the ministry shut down 277 markets involved in selling pirated and smuggled recordings around the country and destroyed 90 million illegal recordings in all.

However, some business people still gathered at the market and sold illegal recordings.

Incomplete statistics show that, during this year's crackdown, 117,000 shops selling audiovisual products have been checked. Some 10,600 stalls without a license were banned, 3,550 licenses were revoked and 252 cases were passed to the police and the public prosecutor.

The crackdown used reports from the public and information provided by the 20-odd investigation teams that the ministry sent out in March.

The teams made secret investigations into the local audiovisual markets of capital cities, municipalities and other cities that had serious problems, looking for first-hand information and clues.

For example, the investigation team in Chongqing Municipality, consisting of staff from the ministry's Cultural Market Administration Department, the China Audio-Video Association and the local culture bureau, made three secret investigations during April and June and found six locations involved in the sale of large quantities of pirated audio and video products.

Around 530,000 pirated recordings were seized between 3 pm on June 27 and 2 am the next day.

Similar actions were taken in Kunming in southwest China's Yunnan Province, where 400,000 illegal audio and video recordings were seized in five different locations. In Yiwu and Hangzhou in east China's Zhejiang Province, around 500,000 illegal discs were confiscated.

China has been fighting against illegal audio and video products since 1989 to protect intellectual property rights.

However, due to the current status of economic development and the lack of consciousness among the public about the protection of intellectual property rights, there are still a lot of pirated recordings in the market. Pirated discs are much cheaper, and the films and albums are more up-to-date.

But officials said genuine audiovisual products are now gaining ground in the market and will gradually replace pirated ones in the future.

( People's Daily August 14, 2002)