This Day, That Year: July 30

Editor's note: This year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of New China.

July 30, 1992 marked China's agreement to join the Universal Copyright Convention. It formally joined in October that year.

Solid progress has been made in recent decades as the country has taken a firm stance on protecting copyright and has cracked down on various forms of infringement, including piracy.

A photo published on June 2, 1998, in China Daily showed law-enforcement officials in Fengxian county, Jiangsu province, explaining copyright to local residents.

Several administrative laws and regulations devoted to copyright protection were enacted in the early 1990s. These include the Copyright Law of the People's Republic of China and the Rules for the Implementation of the Copyright Law, both effective from 1991, and the Regulation on the Protection of Computer Software, which came into effect in October of that year.

In preparation for China's entry into the World Trade Organization, revisions were made to all these laws and regulations at the start of the new millennium.

Since then, China has joined several international conventions to expand cooperation.

In 1992, it joined the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. In April 1993, it was accepted as a member of the Convention for the Protection of Producers of Phonograms Against Unauthorized Duplication of Their Phonograms.

In 2014, China set up specialized intellectual property courts in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, Guangdong province. The move marked an important step forward for the country in dealing with counterfeiting and providing greater protection.

Thanks to the efforts, China has made marked progress in intellectual property development, with its international ranking improving from 13th position in 2017 to eighth last year among 40 major countries by the IP composite index, according to an annual report released by the Intellectual Property Development and Research Center, affiliated with the National Intellectual Property Administration.