Source: Chinese Ministry of Commerce
The U.S. has accused China of overlooking the protection of intellectual property rights, and the country has even taken this as an excuse for imposing harsh tariffs on Chinese products.
But figures from both China and the U.S. show that China's payments for the use of U.S. intellectual property are have been continuously rising, with U.S. businesses greatly benefiting from IP protection in China.
The U.S. is the largest source country for intellectual property imported to China. The royalties China paid to the U.S. have doubled in the past six years from about 3.5 billion U.S. dollars in 2011 to over seven billion U.S. dollars in 2017.
It's also shown that U.S. businesses have greatly benefited from IP protection in China. From 2012 to 2016, China imported 28,000 copyrights from the U.S. and the U.S. applied for over 58,000 trademark transfers in China, 4.5 percent of the total number.
U.S. figures show that China paid about eight billion U.S. dollars in licensing fees to the U.S. in 2016. In terms of the cultural industry, China imported 31 American films at a cost of 650 million U.S. dollars in 2017.
China's progress in IP protection has been recognized by the international community, and a series of awards well demonstrate its efforts: China Customs won the National Public Body Award of the Global Anti-Counterfeiting Network in 2011; the Economic Investigation Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security won the award for Distinguished Contributions to Anti-counterfeiting Enforcement in 2012.
This February, the GIPC released a report on the International Intellectual Property Index 2018, in which China ranked 25th among the surveyed economies, two places up from 2017.
