The Changing Role of Copyright in China's Emergent Media Economy

Abstract

This chapter introduces the changing role of copyright in China from a historical perspective. It begins by briefly tracing the history of copyright, from a censorship related system associated with the emergence of the printing press in Imperial China, through modernization during the Republican period, abolition under Communism, and finally to the introduction of the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) first copyright law in 1990 and the nation’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001.