Looking Backward, Moving Forward: Copyright Administrative Enforcement in China

The dual-track system of judicial and administrative protection has always been a distinct feature of copyright protection in China over the past three decades. A detailed historical retrospective shows the predominant role of administrative enforcement for safeguarding copyright and the significant role of path dependence in the creation of the Chinese copyright administrative enforcement system. TRIPS, domestic copyright legislation and various policy documents laid the legal basis for copyright administrative enforcement in China. This paper reveals that there is a notable lack of focus on the infrequent use of administrative dispute resolution procedures for copyright disputes and extra-judicial enforcement measures carried out by copyright administrations, namely regulatory talks (yuetan) and campaigns, to address copyright infringements on online platforms. In particular, extra-judicial regulatory approaches are often accompanied by fundamental flaws such as the lack of proportionality, legal certainty, and due procedures, undermining the expected predictability and stability of copyright regulations. This paper argues that open and transparent rules and procedures should be implemented to halt such aggressive expansion of administrative intervention; a platform-oriented co-regulatory framework would reconcile the collaboration between state intervention and industry expertise, thereby shifting the governance paradigm from centralized dispute resolution to diverse alternative mechanisms; the focus of copyright administration should shift from law enforcement to the development of serviced-oriented copyright administrative protection. Although this paper focuses primarily on the Chinese perspective, the Chinese experience with copyright governance could offer some lessons to inform the global policy debate.