27.5 Million Illegal Discs Destroyed in Chinese Cities

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, August 14, 2002

27.5 Million Illegal Discs Destroyed in Chinese Cities

The Ministry of Culture Tuesday destroyed 27.5 million illegal audio and video recordings in major Chinese cities, part of a crackdown launched in May and June this year on markets selling audiovisual products .

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The Ministry of Culture Tuesday destroyed 27.5 million illegal audio and video recordings in major Chinese cities.

In Nanjing, the capital of East China's Jiangsu Province, 11.2 million illegal discs were destroyed.

The recordings are just part of the 43.45 million pirated and smuggled discs that cultural authorities have seized in the first half of this year, said Vice-Minister of Culture Zhao Weisui, speaking in Nanjing.

In May and June this year, the ministry launched a crackdown on markets selling audiovisual products.

Last year, the ministry shut down 277 markets involved in selling pirated and smuggled recordings around the country and destroyed 90 million illegal recordings in all.

However, some business people still gathered at the site of the closed market and sold illegal recordings.

Incomplete statistics show that, during this year's crackdown, 117,000 shops selling audiovisual products have been checked. Some 10,600 stalls without a licence were banned, 3,550 licences were revoked and 252 cases were passed to the police and the public prosecutor.

The crackdown used reports from members of the public and information provided by the 20-odd investigation teams that the ministry sent out in March.

The teams made secret investigations into the local audiovisual markets of capital cities, municipalities and other cities that had serious problems, looking for first-hand information and clues.

For example, the investigation team in Chongqing Municipality, consisting of staff from the ministry's Cultural Market Administration Department, the China Audio-Video Association and the local culture bureau, made three secret investigations during April and June and found six locations involved in the sale of large quantities of pirated audio and video products.

Around 530,000 pirated recordings were seized between 3 pm on June 27 and 2 am the next day.

Similar actions were taken in Kunming in Southwest China's Yunnan Province, where 400,000 illegal audio and video recordings were seized in five different locations. In Yiwu and Hangzhou in East China's Zhejiang Province, around 500,000 illegal discs were confiscated.

War intensifies

China started its fight against pirated and smuggled audio-visual products in 1989, and since that time the battle has never stopped. In particular, in the six years since 1996, the Ministry of Culture has devoted huge amounts of capital and human resources to the campaign.

In May 1996, the ministry held the first national meeting on managing the country's audio-visual market, deciding to map out a 12-month action plan to put the market in order.

The campaign, which ended in 1997, saw the seizure of 10 million illegal audio-visual products, the closure of at least 4,000 shops selling and renting illegal audio-visual products, the closure of more than 20 large-scale markets and the arrest of about 800-odd suspects.

In Guangdong Province, in South China, 29 illegal disc production lines were confiscated.

Since then, cultural market administrations have been devoting huge efforts to uncover and shut down illegal recording production lines. Some regions offered rewards to those who provided authorities with clues leading to closure of illegal production lines.

Such efforts have seen considerable success.

A total of 137 illegal production lines have been closed down in China so far, according to official statistics.

Illegal operators began shifting their focus to smuggling pirated overseas audio-visual products into the Chinese mainland after 1997.

Chinese Customs soon noticed the change and launched actions aimed at stopping the smuggling of discs. From 1997 to present, Customs has confiscated at least 50 million smuggled discs.

Starting in 1999, the Ministry of Culture has held annual campaigns promoting an awareness of anti-piracy and the need for copyright protection among the public.

A list of illegal audio recordings was made public at the end of 1999. A special campaign against such recordings from January to March 2000 brought in 6.19 million illegal audio and video recordings, the punishment of about 5,000 shops and the revoking of 1,750 business licences.

On December 2, 2001, more than 200 cities were involved in the destruction of 18.3 million illegal audio and visual recordings, bringing the total figure for the year to 90.05 million.

From 1999 to the end of this year, 277 audio-visual product markets around the nation will have been forced to close down. As such markets used to be the gathering place for purveyors of illegal recordings, this large-scale closing has cut off their major distribution and sales channels.

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