Worldwide: China´s National IP Strategy 2008
Feasible Commitments Or Road To Nowhere Paved With Good Intentions?

Danny Friedmann

China's State Council promulgated a national intellectual property strategy [1]. In the policy document there is a lot of talk about doing everything more efficient and more effective. Great, but how to achieve these laudable goals?
Over the last two decades, and especially around the time China ascended to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 2001, China impressively improved its system of IP protection and enforcement. However, it's aspirations to make the enforcement "hard as steel and definitely not soft as bean curd" as China's premier Wen Jiaobao aspired for in 2006 [2], have not yet materialised. In the so called Compendium of China's National Intellectual Property Strategy [3], an extensive list of aspirations and measures, China is vowing to develop itself into a country with a relatively higher level of intellectual property right creation, utilisation, protection and administration by 2020.
So what exactly is a national IP strategy? Are all desired goals and commitments in there? What is missing? And how to achieve the goals set out in the strategy?
What is a national IP strategy?