Waving fake DVDs and pirated books, officials from Hollywood and the US publishing industry complained to US lawmakers on Thursday that the rampant counterfeiting problem in China was wreaking havoc on their businesses.
At a Congressional hearing on Beijing's enforcement of intellectual property (IP) rights, the US pharmaceutical industry also highlighted its losses -- at a "conservative" estimate of US$3.4 billion annually -- from the manufacture and sale of fake medicine in China and exports of fakes from China.
"More than nine of every 10 DVDs in the China market is fake," Dan Glickman, chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America, lamented at the hearing in the House of Representatives. "Regrettably, to coin a phrase, if you did not see a counterfeit DVD, you were not in China."
The world's film industry lost US$2.7 billion in China in 2005, according to research commissioned by the association, whose members themselves took a blow of US$244 million that year, Glickman said.
But he pointed out that even though one could see -- in pirated form -- any US film in China, the legitimate market was one of the world's most restricted.
The US motion picture industry, he said, poured millions of dollars in fighting piracy in China but the effort would be worthless unless it "has fair access to a fair China market."
Piracy in China affects film makers around the world, he said.
"Our research indicates that almost half the pirated product is actually Chinese. We also find stolen copies of Japanese, Korean, French and Indian movies in China," he said.
In addition, the association's analysis of pirated DVDs seized from around the world traced their production back to more than 50 plants in China.
A pirated disc made in China can, in a day or two, be on the streets of Los Angeles.
Patricia Schroeder, president of the Association of American Publishers, said US publishers in China last year suffered an estimated US$52 million in losses because of piracy on the Internet.
Book piracy also includes illegal commercial scale photocopying of academic materials, print piracy and unauthorized translations as well as trademark counterfeiting, Schroeder said.
Her association's 300 members include most of the key US commercial book publishers and chalk up an annual turnover of more than US$25 billion.
She said representatives of the American publishers had "routinely seen" pirated books sold by street vendors outside the venue of the Beijing International Book Fair, China's largest and most respected book expo.
Bestsellers such as the Harry Potter series, Dan Brown's novels and political autobiographies are pirated in English and Chinese within days of their home country releases, Schroeder said.
Geralyn Ritter, senior vice-president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said while the Chinese government had taken steps to combat drug counterfeiting, the prevalence of fake drugs from China was a "substantial concern."
"Indeed, China is believed to be the world's leading exporter of counterfeit drugs and bulk chemicals," she said.
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