Business: US blacklist lacks ‘objectivity’

Recent moves harming Chinese firms’ confidence

The Chinese government and domestic enterprises have strengthened efforts to protect intellectual property rights (IPR) and hope that this can help address bilateral disputes with the US, a Chinese trade official said Thursday.

The comment came after the US Trade Representative (USTR) on January 12 put nine Chinese online and brick-and-mortar markets on its blacklist of companies suspected of selling counterfeit products.

In its report, the USTR used phrases like “according to local media reports” and “rights holders said,” which indicates a lack of solid evidence and statistics, Gao Feng, spokesperson for the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM), said at a regular press conference held in Beijing. “We have to doubt the objectivity and reliability of the US report,” he said

The report said that “it does not constitute a legal finding of a violation or an analysis of the general IP protection and enforcement environment in any affiliated country or economy,” noted Gao.

The Chinese government has been giving high priority to IPR protection and related domestic firms and markets have made great efforts to deal with the situation, with active and universally recognized progress, the spokesman said.

In the first three quarters of 2017, Chinese authorities cracked down on more than 9,800 IPR infringement cases, according to MOFCOM data.

The Chinese government will urge the US to evaluate these IPR protection efforts in a comprehensive, objective and fair way, in the hope that the two nations can strengthen IPR cooperation to properly address disputes and advance common development, Gao said.

On January 9, the US Congress proposed a bill that would prohibit any government agency from working with Chinese telecommunications firms.

The bill sends the “wrong signal” to the market, and is not conducive for cooperation between the telecommunications industries of the two countries, Gao said. The Chinese government hopes that the US could consider the consumers’ perspective, treat Chinese companies and products fairly and try to create a more open, impartial and transparent market environment, said MOFCOM.