Causes of Piracy and Counterfeiting in China

Every year, the United States was estimated to have suffered from billions of dollars of trade losses due to piracy and counterfeiting in China. While the Chinese undeniably have taken a free ride on the creative efforts of Western authors and inventors, greed alone does not explain the massive piracy and counterfeiting problems in the country. Instead, one needs to develop a better understanding of the Confucian beliefs ingrained in the Chinese culture, the country‟s socialist economic system, the leader‟s skepticism toward Western institutions, the xenophobic and nationalist sentiments of the Chinese populace, the government‟s censorship and information control policy, and the significantly different Chinese legal culture and judicial system.