China has to strengthen protection of intellectual property rights or risk stifling a growing spirit for innovation, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said yesterday.
Controlling information on the Internet and elsewhere will undermine China's progress as new ideas develop best in free societies, Bloomberg told a conference on innovation in the Chinese capital.
"I can tell you that efforts to control access to information -- whether it's the Internet or anywhere else -- will undermine progress. Access to information is a strength, not a threat, and it is a fundamental part of innovation," he said, citing his experience running Bloomberg LP, the financial data and news company he founded.
"The more that China embraces this notion, the more innovative it will become," he said.
China will also increasingly realize that lax legal protection for intellectual property will cause innovators to take their business overseas or stop innovation, he said.
"China should be the champion of property rights protection -- not the `Wild West' where anything goes and `something for nothing' is accepted practice," he said. "In the long run, nations that protect and incentivize innovation will have an enormous edge over those that don't."
US officials are in Beijing this week led by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson as part of the third US-China Strategic Economic Dialogue. Intellectual property rights will be one point of discussion, as well as economic globalization, clean energy technology and food safety.
There is increasing pressure from the US side for China to revalue its currency and improve its intellectual property regime. The US runs a large and growing deficit with China, and many critics say the yuan is being kept artificially low, helping China's booming exports and increasing the deficit.
China's weak intellectual property rights means counterfeit US movies, music and other products are commonly available, reducing sources of revenue from these sectors for US companies.
Chinese movie makers and others also complain their products are widely copied, and Beijing streets are full of counterfeit products for next year's Summer Olympics.
Human Rights Watch, a New York-based human rights organization, said in a letter to Bloomberg last week that he should raise issues of human rights on his visit to Beijing.
He should express concern over media freedoms in the country because of his media background, the group said.
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