Xi talks about making China a big IP creator
Below are the stories that I found noteworthy from the People’s Daily’s February 01, 2021, edition. There wasn’t a lot that caught my attention today, but here goes.
Page 1: The lead story is about Xi’s article in Quishi (available here) on innovation and intellectual property rights. In it, Xi basically says that as China transforms into “a big country in intellectual property creation,” the “intellectual property work is shifting from pursuing quantity to improving quality.” IPR protection is important because, “innovation is the first driving force for development, and protecting intellectual property rights is protecting innovation.”
Going ahead, Xi outlines six tasks to be carried out:
First, strengthen the top-level design of intellectual property protection. In this context, he talks about planning and then the philosophical underpinnings of China’s IPR approach. “We should adhere to the principle of ‘we’, the supremacy of people's interests, fair and reasonable protection, not only strictly protect intellectual property rights, but also prevent excessive expansion of individual and corporate rights, and ensure that both public interests and incentives for innovation are achieved.”
Second, improve the level of legalization of intellectual property protection. In this, he talks about harmonising IPR in the context of other laws, better judicial protection, trial system and legal norms.
Third, strengthen the protection of the entire chain of intellectual property rights. This relates to opening up “the whole chain of intellectual property creation, application, protection, management and service, improving the comprehensive management system of intellectual property, and enhancing the system’s protection capacity.”
Fourth, deepen the reform of the intellectual property protection work system and mechanism. This covers a number of areas, including improving “the intellectual property protection system in new fields and new business forms such as big data, artificial intelligence, and genetic technology, and timely study and formulate protection methods for traditional culture and traditional knowledge.”
Fifth, coordinate the promotion of international cooperation and competition in the field of intellectual property rights. This covers the desire to participate in “global intellectual property governance” and “tell the story of Chinese intellectual property well, and show the image of a civilized and responsible power.”
Sixth, safeguard national security in the field of intellectual property rights. This entails strengthening “independent research and development and protection of key core technologies related to national security, and to manage the transfer of intellectual property rights related to national security in accordance with the law.” And also: “It is necessary to promote the extraterritorial application of my country's intellectual property laws and regulations, and improve cross-border judicial coordination arrangements. It is necessary to form an efficient early warning and emergency response mechanism for international intellectual property risks, build a system for the prevention and control of foreign intellectual property risks, and increase assistance for overseas intellectual property rights protection of Chinese enterprises.”
The other noteworthy story on the page is about Xi congratulating Nguyen Phu Trong on his election as the general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee. Xinhua’s English version has the details.
Page 2: The State Council’s joint prevention and control mechanism spoke about an epidemic prevention and control policy during the Spring Festival travel period.
The spokesman for the National Health and Health Commission outlined ‘six nos’ for provinces other than Beijing. These are:
do not arbitrarily prohibit people from outside to return to their hometowns for the New Year
do not implement centralized and home isolation measures for people returning to their hometowns
do not conduct nucleic acid testing for non-key populations who move across provinces to cities in low-risk areas
do not check nucleic acid test certificates for non-key populations returning from low-risk areas in the province
do not conduct home health monitoring of returnees in the province
do not the period of home health monitoring
All this comes amid reports that China’s National Health Commission wants people returning to rural areas to produce a negative COVID-19 test issued up to seven days before their departure during the Spring Festival. They'll also have to be under a 14-day ‘home observation’ period - which still allows them to leave their home, but requires them to monitor their temperature daily. Also, people in large cities are being encouraged to stay at home. Of course, the travel numbers so far have been well below what’s normal for this time of the year.
At the press conference, officials also informed that as of now, the cumulative number of vaccinations for the novel coronavirus in China has exceeded 24 million doses. They also talked about the controversies regarding food contamination with COVID-19. Global Times’ English report on this quotes the official quoted in the PD report.
“The fact that some food samples tested positive for coronavirus doesn't mean they could lead to infections, as the tests targeted the fragments of viral nucleic acids, and positive results could come from viruses on the food that are alive or dead, Li Ning, deputy director at the China National Center for Food Safety Risk Assessment, said during a press conference on Sunday. Testing positive for coronavirus only means that the food has been contaminated, Li said, noting that so far no cases have been reported of consumers being infected with the virus through purchasing or processing the contaminated food.”
Page 9: In the Theory page today, there’s a piece by the Secretary of the Party Committee of Guizhou University. He writes about the objectives and approaches to education policy going ahead. So, the first task is to uphold the Party’s leadership. “During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, the education system must be guided by Xi Jinping’s thoughts on socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era, strengthen the ‘four consciousnesses’, strengthen the four self-confidences’, achieve the two safeguards’...” The goal of the system is to “cultivate socialist builders and successors with all-round development of morality, intellect, physical fitness and aesthetics.”