Beijing warns Washington against piracy sanctions

Beijing warns Washington against piracy sanctions

BEIJING (AFP): China warned yesterday of retaliation if the United States resorted to sanctions over a long-running copyright piracy dispute, as the two sides prepared for new talks on the contentious issue next month.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Economic Cooperation (MOFTEC) official Zhang Yuejiao told the China Daily that the imposition of threatened U.S. sanctions worth some US$1 billion against imports of Chinese goods would "undoubtedly trigger retaliation."

Zheng said China had done its best to meet commitments made in an 11th-hour Sino-U.S. agreement on protecting intellectual property rights (IPR) signed Feb. 26, 1995, urging Washington to take a "practical attitude" by fulfilling its pledges to cooperate with Beijing to curb the problem.

"You can't expect IPR violations to disappear overnight," said Chinese Academy of Social Sciences IPR center director Zheng Chengsi.

Resorting to "meaningless" sanctions would "only indicate that the Clinton administration is incapable of handling the Sino-U.S. economic relationship," he added, saying it was unfair of Washington to single out China from numerous countries where piracy was widespread.

The comments came ahead of a new round of talks here next month aimed at settling the dispute.

The China Daily reported that the exact dates of the talks remained unavailable, but a U.S. embassy spokeswoman said Washington's chief IPR negotiator, Assistant Trade Representative Lee Sands, was due to make an eight-day visit to Beijing from Wednesday.

Sands' boss, U.S. Deputy Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky, might join him for the final three days, the spokeswoman said, in an indication that Washington may be hoping for a breakthrough by the end of the talks.

Washington has revived its threat, first made before the signing of the 1995 agreement, to impose $1 billion worth of sanctions if Beijing fails to make rapid progress in implementing the deal.

U.S. officials said last month that while Chinese police have cracked down on traders of pirated goods, the production situation has actually deteriorated over the past year with the number of compact disc plants rising from 29 to 34.

All are engaged piracy, they alleged, adding that the factories' shift to increasingly high-priced items pushed up the value of U.S. firms' losses to piracy in China in 1995 above 1994's $866 million.

China has denied the allegations, insisting that significant progress has been made in tackling the piracy problem.