Right to Participate in Cultural Activities & Benefit from Sci-Tech Progress

Investment in China's cultural undertakings has increased year after year. Back in 1996, the Chinese government obliged both the central and local budgets to increase cultural undertakings year after year along with the development of the national economy.

From 1998 to 2002, central and local government spending on cultural undertakings totaled 32.42 billion yuan, 2.7 times as much as during the Eight Five-Year Plan period (1991-1995). The 2004 central government budget allocated 5.37 billion yuan for the purpose, more than any of the previous years.

The Regulations Concerning Public Sports and Cultural Facilities, which became effective for implementation in 2003, cover the construction, operation, management and protection of libraries, museums, sports venues and other sites for cultural activities with mass participation. At the end of 2003, there were 2,892 cultural centers, 2,708 public libraries and 1,591 museums across the country. The Chinese Federation of Literary and Art Circles had 50 group members and well over 2 million individual members. In 2003, there were 2,587 art troupes across the country.

Some 140 feature films were produced in the year, along with 61 documentaries and cartoon films.

China has done a great deal to promote art education to train both professional and amateur artists. Testifying to its success in this regard is a fairly large system of art education consisting of a completed range of subjects that are taught at schools of all levels. Music, fine art and handwork lessons are given at kindergartens, primary and middle schools. Many universities have art colleges or departments, and normal colleges and schools all have art departments. Doctoral courses in art are offered at 23 sites in 18 institutions of higher learning, and courses for master degree in art, at 152 sites at 90 institutions of higher learning. Undergraduate courses in art are given in 80

disciplines. There are 90 art libraries and research institutes across the country, which have a combined staff of 6,457. From 1997 to 2001, higher art schools in China enrolled 7,793 students and graduated 5,137. During the same period, secondary art schools across the country enrolled 113,842 students and graduated 80,637. Many millions of children and youths are learning in their spare time instrumental or vocal music, theatrical performance, painting and literary writing. Art festivals for amateurs are held annually, in which millions of youths participate. Mass cultural and art activities are also organized at cultural centers, youths' and children's cultural palaces and senior citizens' schools.

A national program was kicked off in 1998 to ensure that all rural villages would be ensured of reception of TV and radio broadcasting. By the end of 2002, the target had been attained in more than 100,000 villages with a combined population of 70 million, for which the government had spent 1.77 billion yuan.

Thanks to this, 93.2% of the Chinese population had gained access to radio broadcasting by 2002, up from 88.3% in 1998; and 94.5% of the Chinese population had come to enjoy TV programs regularly, up from 89%. At the end of 2003, the country had 282 radio stations, plus 744 short- and medium-wave transmitting and relay stations.

There were 320 TV stations in the country, along with 62 offering educational programs. In 2003, national and provincial-level papers had a combined circulation of 24.36 billion, and 2.99 billion copies of periodicals and 6.75 billion copies of books were sold the same year.

The state attaches great importance to cultural life of people in remote, outlying and underdeveloped areas. The government has been spending huge sums purchasing the copyrights of good works produced by artists and writers in these areas to ensure their publication, and encouraging art troupes to go there for performance. What merits special mention is that artists from the country's top-class art troupes are organized to perform for free in these areas, and that sending artists, scientists and medical workers in cities to rural areas to serve the local people has become a regular practice in many parts of China. Ongoing is a national program to ensure that one film show in a month will be guaranteed for a vast majority of the Chinese people, in particular those living in remote, outlying areas and areas of ethnic minorities.

In 1980, China became a full member of the World Intellectual Property Organization. Since then, it has acceded to the Paris Convention for Protection of Industrial Property Rights, Madrid Agreement on International Registration of Trademarks, Berne Convention for Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, and Convention for Protection of Producers of Recording Works and for Prevention of Duplication of their Works without Authorization.

Over the years, China has promulgated or revised a string of laws for protection of intellectual property rights, including the Copyright Law, Patent Law and Trademark Law. These provide, in explicit terms, the right of individual citizens and corporate entities to ownership of their intellectual creations. With a view to making law enforcement for intellectual property right protection even more effective, the Criminal Law was revised in 1997 to make infringement upon intellectual property rights a crime. In December 2004, the Supreme People's Court and Supreme People's Procuratorate published a set of judicial interpretations on the applicability of the relevant laws in the handling of

criminal cases involving infringement of intellectual property rights. In just a decade, China developed a fairly sound system of legislation for protection of intellectual property rights, which conforms to international practices while suiting its own conditions. In short, it has done something that had taken some developed countries decades or even a whole century to accomplish.

The country has also set up a complete system for enforcement of legal protection of intellectual property rights. Since 1992, more than 20 intellectual property right benches have been set up in people's courts. Since 2000, the Supreme People's Court has published 25 legal interpretations on trials of intellectual property right cases. In 2003, trials were finished on 9,217 civil cases involving infringement upon intellectual property rights.

From 1998 to the first half of 2004, courts finished trials of 1,841 criminal cases involving infringement of intellectual property rights, in the course of which sentencing was passed on 3,106 persons. Moreover, the relevant administrative authorities can mete out administrative penalties, including fines and confiscation of illegally obtained earnings, against those proven to have infringed upon others' intellectual property rights. In 2001, more than 100 million copies of pirated audiovisual works were confiscated and destroyed, along with 4.12 copies of pirated computer software. The same year also saw prosecution against 22,813 cases of trademark forgery. Nationwide crackdown was launched in September 2004 on infringement upon intellectual property rights, which is scheduled to end in August 2005.

China is a developing country with the largest population in the world. Due to a range of limitations, natural and historic, it still has problems in enabling the Chinese people to fully enjoy the rights to which they are entitled, such as the question of enough food and clothing for some 29 million people. Moreover, the country needs to continue working persistently to solve problem in re-employment of laid-off workers, industrial safety, social security and AIDS prevention and treatment.