Two articles all indicated that China has been blacklisted by the U.S. Trade Representative due to assisting in selling or facilitating the sale of fake products. Chinese online marketplace and store-based retailers were known for distributing, manufacturing and selling counterfeit goods. China and The United States have remained a controversial problem about intellectual property over the years. According to the Department of Homeland Security report a 10-fold increase in seizures of counterfeit products at the U.S. border over the past 20 years. However, nearly 90 percent of products came from China or Hong Kong. Eschulze. (2020, March 2).
The first article proposes how the emergence of Chinese counterfeit and shoddy products on Amazon is ruining the economy of American companies. Chinese manufacturers are imitating branded products very quickly, albeit with new products and they can be copied very quickly. They put in the effort of innovation, production, and marketing to launch products. If fake products can reap the same benefits and results, it will make American companies lose the incentive to innovate and constantly launch new products. Therefore, cracking down on counterfeit products is a necessary task to maintain the vitality of American enterprises. This requires the United States to spend huge amounts of money, resources and time to track down counterfeit goods. Amazon has rolled out new anti-counterfeiting initiatives and more than $400 million was invested to fight counterfeiting, fraud and other forms of abuse in 2018. One example is Project Zero, which allows brands to remove counterfeit items from the market. In a statement to CNBC, an Amazon spokesperson said they will collaborate with brands, government officials and law enforcement to fight counterfeit products and protect their stores together.
The second article argue that China has been tackling the problem of fake products in various ways, such as establishing courts for intellectual property cases, and promoting and educating the importance of intellectual property rights on the Internet, and has been encouraging everyone to innovate more content and products that belong to them. Because the idea of copyright protection among Chinese people has not been fully established and the awareness of copyright protection is not strong. Pirated copycat is widely accepted, and people can’t protect their copyright effectively when they are infringed. Over the past decade, China’s Internet has developed rapidly, from completely unaware of the existence of copyright awareness to attaching more and more attention to intellectual property rights. It still takes a long way to go if China wants to completely solve the problem of intellectual property rights. it is difficult to only rely on government laws and supervision of sales platforms. All stakeholders such as education, society and culture should come together to address these issues. Azernews.Az. (2014, November 21).
Azernews.Az. (2014, November 21). Alibaba, Tencent founders push for copyright protection in China. Retrieved September 17, 2022, from https://www.azernews.az/bloomberg/73574.html
Eschulze. (2020, March 2). Counterfeit goods from China are crushing American small businesses – and they’re calling on trump to fight back. CNBC. Retrieved September 17, 2022, from https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/28/small-businesses-are-pushing-trump-to-fight-chinese-counterfeits.html