Chong Quan, Deputy China International Trade Representative, attended and addressed the Opening Ceremony of 2012 China's Overseas IPR Exchange Tour and the 2nd China-US International Cooperation Forum on IPR, on September 19th, in Washington DC, U.S.A.

Mr. Chong said that, encouraging innovation and protecting intellectual property rights (IPR) are the inner requirement for China's ongoing efforts for economic restructuring and industrial upgrading, and the need to conform to future economic and social development trend. Based on the relatively complete legislation and law enforcement system on IPR, China paid more efforts to IPR protection work in recent years. Chinese government put forward the goal of constructing an innovative nation, and upgraded its IPR protection system into a national strategy. China's 12th Five-Year Development Plan promulgated in 2011 defines science and innovation as an important tool to support the country's shift of economic growth model, and stresses the need to "improve relevant legislation to help strengthen the creation, application, protection and management of intellectual property

Mr. Chong also said that from September 2010 to June 2011, after the nine-month special campaign against IPR infringement and counterfeits, the State Council set up a leading group against IPR infringement and counterfeits headed by Vice Premier Wang Qishan, in November 2011. The leading group aimed to lead the national work to crack down upon IPR infringement and manufacture and sales of counterfeiting and shoddy commodities, and has formed a long-term mechanism of IPR protection. The leading group is responsible for researching and defining the focus of national work against IPR infringement and counterfeits of the whole year and each quarter, making the general arrangement and coordinating the work advancement. Since its establishment, legal and standard system on IPR has been improved, and connection of administrative and criminal law enforcement on IPR has been advanced; more efforts on the rectification of major commodities, fields and markets have been paid; capability of law enforcement and crackdown is strengthening and regional coordination on law enforcement has made positive progress. Until May of 2011, 135 central government and national organs completed inspection and rectification on software, and purchased 91.8 thousand sets of authorized operating system, office and anti-virus software, with value reaching 77.23 million yuan. Urged by the State Council, the utilization of authorized software by the governments at provincial level has concluded by June 2012 as scheduled. The work of eliminating pirated software and utilization authorized software in governments at municipal and county level will be completed by the end of 2013.

Mr. Chong pointed out that the development of Internet industry is entering its golden times, at the same time, IPR protection on the Internet is becoming increasingly sharp. Against the economic and technological background at the new era, to cope with the new challenges in IPR protection can not do without the close cooperation among nations. Only cooperation based on mutual trust, mutual understanding and win-win results can bring along impetus and room for development. In IPR protection, the Chinese government has always been trying to carry out all-round and multi-tiered exchanges and cooperation with all nations and regions in the world. Besides the communication mechanism of the IPR working group with the US, EU, Japan, Switzerland, Russia and Brazil, China has started all-round and comprehensive IPR cooperation programs with the EU since 1996, and cooperation program for the third phase is set in motion. The cooperation program has deepened understanding on each other’s IPR system, effective and mutually beneficial, and it is a model of cooperation between developing countries and developed countries in IPR protection.