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Piracy and the State: The Politics of Intellectual Property Rights in China. By Martin K. Dimitrov. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 307 pp. $85.00 (cloth).
China is often seen as representing a paradigmatic case of a strong state, the last and (possibly) most successful of the authoritarian developmen- tal states of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, when we step outside the special economic zones and when we turn our eyes away from eco- nomic development or national security matters, the incapacity of the Chinese Communist state to implement and enforce its laws and policies becomes quite puzzling. As Martin K. Dimitrov shows in Piracy and the State, the issue area of protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) is a telling example. China devotes more resources than any other country for IPR enforcement, and yet it remains one of the biggest pirates in the world.
In this book, Dimitrov looks at IPR enforcement in China as a win- dow through which to observe the intricacies of the Chinese state and to develop an analytical framework that contributes to a much more sys- tematic assessment of state capacity. Dimitrov's departure point is the important premise that high volumes of enforcement (reactive cam- paigns, full of sound and fury, to crisis situations in response to foreign or domestic pressures) do not necessarily entail high-quality enforcement (what Dimitrov calls "rationalized enforcement": transparent, consistent, and procedurally fair). The persistence of IPR piracy in China over time, despite the material and human resources spent in attacking it, demon- strates the pertinence of such a distinction.
Through a very detailed case study occasionally compared to the cases of Taiwan, Russia, the Czech Republic, the United States, and France, Dimitrov first opens up the complex Chinese bureaucracy in order to map out all the state agencies that participate in IPR enforce- ment....