Most people in Beijing - Chinese and Westerners alike - know how easy it was to get pirated DVD movies just about anywhere.

But now buyers are finding the buying a little more difficult, and the sellers seem to be preoccupied, looking around for authorities ready to crack down on their businesses.

When China reacted with "deep regret" yesterday to the US Government's decision to include the country on an intellectual property rights watch list, one of the reasons was the progress it believes has been made.

"China has made huge achievements in intellectual property rights (IPR) protection since China and the United States signed a bilateral IPR memorandum in 1992," said Zhang Zhigang, office director of the State Work Group on IPR Protection and also vice-minister of commerce.

The Ministry of Commerce released figures: 24,189 trademark infringement cases handled and more than 167 million illegal audio-video products and pirated products seized since it launched a massive crackdown on IPR violations last September.

Zhang also said 24 illegal CD production lines had been destroyed and 2,960 illegal printing workshops shut down.

But other supporting evidence can be found on the streets of Beijing.

Han Kexiang, a senior student at the University of International Business and Economics, said he had not seen the group of private CD vendors who used to linger around the gate of a park nearby for "quite a long time."

"Those women always took small kids with them, so they were easy to recognize when you passed by," Han said.

In the first five months of this year, Beijing courts adjudicated 1,280 cases of IPR violations, fake or substandard commodity production and sales and illegal business operations, a rise of 23 per cent over last year.

But Zhang also pointed out that the problem of intellectual property rights infringement is not unique to China.

"Europe and the United States also witness rampant IPR violations," he said.

He cited a survey released by the US Business Software Alliance on May 18 saying that losses incurred by piracy in Europe and the United States are the highest, with the per capita loss reported there far surpassing that of the Asia-Pacific region.

"Therefore, the priorities in the global crackdown on piracy should first be the EU, then the United States and then the Asia-Pacific region," Zhang said. "China does not deserve to be among the top priorities yet."

Also yesterday, the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) said it would help local governments improve the IPR mechanism in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region to accelerate the region's economic development.

Tian Lipu, SIPO's new director, said the office would earmark more out of the region's budget beginning this year.

Free trade areas on the border and Urumqi, capital of the region, have been selected as trial bases for better practices in IPR protection and innovation, Tian said.

In addition, SIPO will support IPR-related personnel training in Xinjiang and conduct personnel exchanges with developed coastal regions.

(China Daily June 29, 2005)