Enhancing the awareness and ability of overseas risk prevention and control is indispensable for China’s creative and copyright industries to seek larger-scale and higher-quality development in the global market. On October 16, the National Copyright Administration of the People’s Republic of China (NCAC) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) jointly presented the 2023 Training on Overseas Risk Prevention and Control of Copyright Industry in Shanghai. It aims to facilitate corporate transformation, upgrading, and the international development of intellectual property rights, supporting enterprises to reasonably avert risks in developing their international businesses.

This training is dedicated to studying and delivering on Xi Jinping Thought on Culture. It also aims to implement the instruction of General Secretary Xi Jinping at the Central Conference on Work Relating to Foreign Affairs held in November 2014 to effectively safeguard China’s overseas interests, continuously improve relevant capacities, and intensify protection efforts. With a focus on the new situation and new tasks of foreign-related copyright work, this training further enhances the international vision and rule-based concept to help China’s copyright industry improve its capabilities of international risk prevention and control, international operation, and international dissemination.

The mobilization meeting of the training highlighted the rapid growth momentum maintained in China’s copyright industry in recent years and extensive copyright internationalization. According to relevant data, the share of China’s copyright industry has been steadily increasing in the national economy. In 2021, the added value of China’s copyright industry registered RMB 8.48 trillion, accounting for 7.41 % of the national GDP. Intellectual property rights have become essential for Chinese enterprises to make a difference in the international market. To ensure broad and steady development, enterprises must possess independent innovation capability and prevent and control overseas risks in international operations. It was requested at the meeting that the publicity and cultural authorities strengthen their commitment to building an international risk prevention and control system for the copyright industry with explicit objectives, clear tasks, effective measures, and coordinated task division. Such a system should focus both on the top-level design at the national level and the micro-operation at the enterprise level. The aim is to pool efforts in ensuring international risk prevention and control for the copyright industry. At the same time, enterprises should diversify their development concepts, uphold fundamental principles and break new ground, and support global publicity of excellent traditional Chinese culture through copyright empowerment. As an internationally accepted language, copyright offers a platform to tell vivid stories of China’s copyright industry and further strengthen the capacity of international copyright dissemination to create a favorable external copyright public opinion environment for China’s reform, development, and stability.

According to the meeting, this year marks the 50th anniversary of the partnership between WIPO and China. China has achieved remarkable results in innovation and creativity, and the copyright industry has demonstrated robust development momentum. At the same time, there are also unprecedented opportunities and challenges. To ensure the development of China’s copyright industry, it is crucial to accurately identify copyright risks, formulate effective risk prevention and control strategies, and enhance international risk prevention and control capabilities. WIPO has signed a memorandum of understanding on bilateral cooperation with NCAC to further strengthen collaboration in copyright legislation, enforcement, industrial development, and capacity building. WIPO will continue to support China’s international copyright cooperation and assist small and medium-sized enterprises, women and young people to bring their creativity to the market and help China’s efforts in becoming an innovative country.

During the training, Gao Hang, Director of the Copyright Development Division of WIPO, gave the first lecture on the development of the international copyright protection system and the copyright issues of related industries. She offered insights into the current situation of international copyright protection, the progress of formulating new treaties, and the development trend of artificial intelligence and other new technologies. She also shared the work of WIPO in the related areas. Chinese and foreign experts were also invited, including Alessandro Enrico Cogo, Professor of the Department of Law of the University of Turin, Italy; Stéphanie Carre, Assistant Directorof the Centre for International Intellectual Property Studies of the University of Strasbourg, France; Zhang Fan, Deputy General Manager and Secretary of the Board of Directors of China Science Publishing & Media Ltd.; and Guan Rui, Deputy General Manager of Wings Media Co., Ltd. of SMG. During the three-day training, they will lecture on the prevention and control of copyright disputes in the international market, the prevention, control and management of overseas copyright risk of literary and musical works, and the exploration of new modes of global copyright development.

The training opening was attended and addressed by Wang Zhicheng, Director General of the Copyright Department, the Publicity Department of CPC Central Committee; Liu Hua, Director of WIPO Office in China; and Gao Yunfei, Deputy Director General of the Publicity Department of the CPC Shanghai Municipal Committee and Director General of Shanghai Municipal Film Bureau. More than 100 people participated in the training, including relevant heads of copyright authorities of provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities, and representatives of the industry.