China’s IP Transition and Explosive Growth In Innovation…How Much Of It Has Really Been Indigenous…?

Michael D. Moberly    May 16, 2012

I recently read a National Bureau of Asian Research report titled, ‘China’s IP Transition: Rethinking Intellectual Property Rights in a Rising China’ and found it to be an insightful strategic window into China’s national intellectual property (innovation agenda) policy.

The reports’ executive summary and main argument reads as follows…

China’s drive to promote indigenous innovation has given IP its creation, utilization, management, and protection a prominent position in the nation’s policy agenda.

In conjunction with its ambitious policies to support indigenous innovation, China launched a major IP strategy in 2008 to support the creation, utilization, management, and protection of IP.

While I do not wish to dispute the thoroughness of the research which the reports’ authors obviously conducted and articulated so well, I do find the word indigenous disconcerting in the context of applying it as a broad descriptor of how China has achieved and intends to sustain its innovation strategy – policy agenda.

I was in China (Shanghai) in 2008 when that policy ‘went public’.  It was the lead story on (English language) CCTV for several days with extended segments devoted to showcasing various, presumably government sponsored, gatherings to convey awareness for this ‘transition to intellectual property’.  Most of the events appeared to be held in Beijing.  Interesting to me, in several of the CCTV stories, large scale education initiatives about intellectual property were being planned.

As most anyone knows who has visited China in this decade, one does not have to walk far in a city to see evidence of entrepreneurism and entrepreneurial thinking which could understandably be characterized as – assumed to be indigenous. However, my work, research, and writing on information asset protection and economic espionage issues for 25+ years influences me to suggest that the term predatorial is also a relevant and objective descriptor of – contributor to China’s innovation policy agenda.

It is not my intent that the term predatorial, as I have chosen to apply it here, be interpreted as anti-China!  Rather, I am merely suggesting the term predatorial should also be applied because of its indigenously embedded nature over a 3000 – 5000 year span of developing a (business) culture.  At minimum, the word predatorial serves as, at least, a partial explanation for China’s phenomenal and rapid business – economic – innovation growth which some western researchers – writers describe as the world’s largest and most rapid transfer of wealth.

After all, we do live and work in an increasingly knowledge (intangible) asset based global economy wherein 65+% of most company’s value, sources of revenue, and ‘building blocks’ for growth, wealth creation, and sustainability evolve directly from intangible assets, of which IP is just one.

I assume ‘indigenous innovation’ is a phrase Chinese policy makers carefully selected and cultivate.   But, I believe the term predatorial used to describe how countries supplant – achieve rapid growth in innovation is applicable to numerous global actors, not just China.

China, in my view, is now immersed in what I respectfully call the ‘third quarter of a generation that recognizes]/ private property, let alone intellectual property’.  But, in China, as in numerous other countries with communist – socialist legacies, there is virtually no intellectual property legacy to follow.  And, China, like many other countries, has countless ‘legacy free players’, a phrase I first saw applied in Thomas Friedman’s books.  While I am certainly not positioning myself to be an arbiter of Friedman’s work, I have consistently used this phrase in a context of describing various countries’ and actors who have yet to fully embrace and consistently practice what I  refer to as an ‘intellectual property rights protection and respect ethic’.

China is no doubt, moving in the right direction, with respect to intellectual property rights. But, it has a ways to go yet for me to broadly use the term indigenous to describe the paths and strategies they have taken to achieve the intent and spirit of the language found in their national innovation agenda.

I encourage all those interested to read the report and draw their own conclusions at…

www.nbr.org/publications/element.aspx?id=520.

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