A few days ago, Yan Xiaohong, Deputy Director of the National Copyright Administration of China (NCAC) said that since the reform and opening-up, remarkable progress has been made in China's copyright protection work, that the copyright industry is making bigger contribution to China's economic growth and that the annual income of copyright from the cultural industry and software industry alone exceeds RMB 800 billion.

At the recent "China High-level Forum on Intellectual Property Rights Protection 2007", Yan said that remarkable progress has been made in China's copyright protection work in recent years.  From 1995 to 2005, a total of 51667 infringement cases had been received by the copyright administrative authorities at different levels and 465 million pieces of different kinds of pirated products were confiscated.  A total of 231 assembly lines for illegal discs within the Chinese territory were confiscated.

In addition, it took China only a little more than a dozen years to build a copyright protection legal system that is of Chinese characteristics and also in line with the international practice, through which, a dual-system characterized by both judicial protection and administrative protection is implemented.  Yan said that "Practice has proved that the dual-track protection system conforms with the current situation of China's development and the objective requirements for copyright protection".  Also, copyright protection has promoted the development of the copyright industry and the growth of the national economy.  Yan said that a survey conducted by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in a number of countries indicate that the development speed of the copyright industry far exceeds that of the other industries and its growth rate almost doubles that of the nation's economy.

Yan concluded that China has not conducted as yet a special statistic on the contribution rate of the copyright industry.  However, should we look at the cultural industry and the software industry alone, we will find that China has realized an annual income exceeding RMB 800 billion in these two sectors, of which, RMB 370 billion came from the cultural industry and RMB 480 billion came from the software industry.  Therefore, the Copyright's contribution rate is becoming bigger and bigger in China's economic and social development.