Japan yesterday urged China to meet its obligations as a member of the WTO through measures including stamping out piracy.
"While China has joined the WTO, it still has many issues left to tackle in the fulfillment of its WTO obligations," the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), said in a report released yesterday on the trade policies of Japan's major trading partners.
"Intellectual property rights infringements, including counterfeiting and piracy, have long been a serious problem in China," the report said.
"The Chinese authorities have taken steps to deal with the problems, but little improvement has been seen."
The report highlighted China's need to improve domestic laws, establish a transparent and uniform administration and to improve training.
Tokyo was looking for "drastic improvements" in the enforcement of intellectual property protection, it added.
The production and distribution of pirated goods such as videos, DVDs, computer games and CDs, is "the largest problem that Asian countries have in common," METI said, singling out China, Taiwan and South Korea as the worst offenders.
METI also said China had "failed to provide explanations that would alleviate" concerns that it was not honoring automobile import quotas.
The report pointed out that last year, the import quota -- allowed to to continue until 2004 under China's WTO accession protocol -- was set at US$7.94 billion worth of vehicles, but actual imports only reached US$3.12 billion in the eight months from April to December.
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