US President George W. Bush's administration wants China to crack down on the rampant piracy of US movies, music and computer programs and will not be satisfied until copyright violators get stiff prison sentences, Commerce Secretary Donald Evans said.
Evans, who was leaving on his fourth and final trip to China as a member of Bush's Cabinet yesterday, said in an interview that he wanted to learn firsthand what China was doing to fulfill promises to better enforce its intellectual property laws.
Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi (
The Motion Picture Association estimates that its members lost up to US$3.5 billion last year from movie pirates. China is considered the second worst offender behind Russia.
Evans said even though the Chinese government had committed to specific steps to combat piracy, the US was concerned about the lack of significant criminal prosecutions.
He said the administration wants to see "jail time and tough criminal actions against those responsible for the thefts. ... We haven't seen enough evidence that this is happening yet."
Evans said he would emphasize this point during meetings with Chinese leaders and in a speech on Thursday at an intellectual property conference in Beijing.
During Bush's second term, the US will keep the pressure on China to abide by the market-opening commitments it made upon joining the WTO, Evans said.
That effort, he said, will continue under Carlos Gutierrez, the president's nominee for commerce secretary. The head of cereal giant Kellogg is awaiting Senate approval to take over for Evans. Evans said in November he was leaving the Cabinet to return to Texas.
Gutierrez told lawmakers last week that the administration intended to press China to narrow the trade gap with the US. That imbalance hit US$124 billion in 2003, a record for any US trading partner, and widened last year.
Critics of the administration's trade policies contend that Bush has not done enough to protect US workers from unfair trade practices in other nations.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
US-CHINA SUMMIT: MOFA welcomed US reassurance of no change in its Taiwan policy; Trump said he did not comment when Xi talked of opposing independence US President Donald Trump yesterday said he has not made a decision on whether to move forward with a major arms package for Taiwan after hearing concerns about it from Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Trump’s comments on Taiwan came as he flew back to Washington after wrapping up critical talks in which both leaders said important progress was made in stabilizing US-China relations even as deep differences persist between the world’s two biggest powers on Iran and Taiwan. “I will make a determination,” Trump said, adding: “I’ll be making decisions. But, you know, I think the last thing we need right
TAIWAN ISSUE: US treasury secretary Scott Bessent said on the first day of meetings that ‘it wouldn’t be a US-China summit without the Taiwan issue coming up’ There were no surprises on the first day of the summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday, as the government reiterated that cross-strait stability is crucial to the Asia-Pacific region, as well as the world. As the two presidents met for a highly anticipated summit yesterday, Chinese state media reported that Xi warned Trump that missteps regarding Taiwan could push their two countries into “conflict.” Trump arrived in China with accolades for his host, calling Xi a “great leader” and “friend,” and extending an invitation to visit the White House
RSS