To copy or not to learn: that is the Chinese question
The United States has just signed another commercial accord with China binding the Peking government to respect copyright laws and pay royalties on American products which are counterfeited by Chinese manufacturers. The ink has yet to dry on the pact and already the Sinologists gathered for a meeting at the Angelli Foundation in Turin are shaking their heads incredulous that Washington can be so ingenuous as to believe in the illusion that the promise will have any binding value on the behavior of the Chinese.
Professor Maria Weber, author of the "China Report," a work published by the foundation and made available to academics and entrepreneurs, claims that this fact has nothing to do with any innate act of bad faith on the part of the Chinese. According to the author, the Chinese ideogram for the word "copy" is exactly the same as that for the word "learn." The Chinese do not conceptualize the two notions as being distinct. Telling a student at school in China not to copy, would be the same as telling him not to learn, which would, of course, be unthinkable. Equally so, in the business world.
Marcello Pacini, member of the Agnelli Foundation, pointed out that the problem was not only a linguistic one but a cultural one. Although he believes in the merits and the obvious necessity of propagating the concept of copyright, he stated that copyrights like international law are both Western ideas and inventions. To prove his point he cited a comment he once heard in China: "You Westerners are certainly hypocritical when it comes to copyrights. You continue exploiting three Chinese inventions without worrying about paying us royalties: gunpowder, the compass, and paper!"
That the Americans are naive to believe that signing an agreement will modify to any great degree how the Chinese conduct business may be true enough. It is doubtful, though, that those who signed actually do believe things will change in the immediate future, but rather are searching to create precedents for the future. That part of the problem is linguistic and cultural is evident academic truth. However, to believe that the Chinese are devoid of any dissimulation in knowingly signing an agreement that they have no intention to abide by is underestimating the shrewdness of the Chinese.
June 1996
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