Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2019

DOI

10.1057/s42214-019-00032-x

Publication Title

Journal of International Business Policy

Pages

1-13

Abstract

It is well recognized that intellectual property rights (IPR) violations are at the heart of the economic conflict with China. Little agreement, however, exists about the origin and solutions for this provocation. Broadly speaking, two prescriptions have been proposed: the natural evolutionary and the rule of law views. While both have merits and add to our understanding, they do not go far enough to address the more fundamental IPR policy issue: China has benefited from a rule of law overseas and a rule through law at home, manufacturing unfair advantage to its firms, many of which are owned and/or influenced by the government. While recognizing China’s recent effort in improving IPR protection, we point out the intrinsic contradiction in the political economy of China between maintaining the one-party rule, on the one hand, and protecting IPR by an independent court, on the other. Understanding this tension in the application of IPR law can help the international community search for more effective policy options.

Comments

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the creative commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

ORCID

0000-0002-7296-084X (Li)

Original Publication Citation

Li, S., & Alon, I. (2019). China’s intellectual property rights provocation: A political economy view. Journal of International Business Policy. doi:10.1057/s42214-019-00032-x

Download

Share

COinS