China in full swing to enhance IPR protection

China will roll out a series of policies to comprehensively strengthen intellectual property rights (IPR) protection in a bid to foster innovation and spur creativity in the country's pursuit of modernization.

Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, called innovation the primary driving force behind the development and equated protecting IPR to protecting innovation. The statement, made by Xi when he presided over a group study session of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee on Monday, reflects that IPR protection occupies a prominent position in the top leadership's governance agenda.

As Xi said, China will improve the top-level design for IPR protection and create a national plan for IPR protection and application for the 14th Five-Year Plan period from 2021 to 2025, specifying goals, tasks, measures and a blueprint for implementation. The plan will strictly protect IPR, ensure public interests and create incentives for innovation.

The arrangement covers detailed measures for various key domains, including making IPR protection more law-based, strengthening the whole-chain IPR protection, deepening the reform of IPR protection mechanisms and systems, promoting international cooperation and competition in IPR and safeguarding national security in the IPR field.

These measures are crucial to China's transformation from a big country of introducing IPR to a big country of creating IPR, and from pursuing IPR quantity to improving quality. This comes at a time when China has made historic achievements in IPR protection, and the awareness of society as a whole to respect and protect IPR has significantly improved. It sends a clear message that China will continue its efforts in IPR protection to guarantee the country's high-quality development.

Xi's words show that, in the new development stage, China will uphold innovation as the central role in its modernization drive and strive to achieve major breakthroughs in core technologies. The goal of the country's innovation-driven development cannot be realized without a strong IPR protection mechanism.

The country's efforts in cultivating a good ecosystem for IPR development are of great significance to improving its business environment. As Chinese firms strive for high-tech innovation at home and faster global expansion, they have demanded more effective legal protection of IPR that can significantly improve the efficiency of the transfer and application of sci-tech achievements.

IPR protection is not only in China's interest, but also beneficial to the world at large. From a global perspective, China's determination to better protect IPR will be encouraging for those who cherish their creativity and ideas and for those who wish to jump on the bandwagon of China's innovative achievements.

Overseas investors should have confidence in China's resolve to protect companies from IPR infringement. Last month, China's top legislature passed an amendment to the copyright law, which raised the ceiling of statutory damages from 500,000 yuan (around 76,200 U.S. dollars) to 5 million yuan. It is an example of the substantial changes that an increasingly innovative China has made in IPR protection.

China will also take part in the global intellectual property governance within the World Intellectual Property Organization framework, promote the improvement of international rules and standards concerning IPR and related international trade and investment fields, and push the global intellectual property governance system in a more just and equitable direction.