Crime And The Black Market In Modern Day China :: essays research papers

Crime and the Black Market in Modern Day mainland chinaware     With a population of approximately 1,203,097,268 people , chinaware, who hasthe worlds largest population, also has the worlds fastest development blacknessmarket and crime problem. In China, crime rates have been climbing an estimated10 percent a year since the early 1980s . China is a country that is currentlyexperiencing both political and economic instability. Economic reforms thathave been put in place by the government have scarce widened the income gap,creating a middle class with money and a lower class of newly poor. With anever increasing size in this gap of income dispersal and the proportional ease ofmaking money through black market sales, it is no wonder more and more Chineseare turning to a spirit of commonly accepted and profitable crime.     Thomas Jefferson once said, "he who receives an idea from me, receivesinstruction himself without lessening mine as he who wilds his taper at mine,receives light without darkening me." Unfortunately, Thomas Jefferson lived ina different time. He lived in a time when piracy was not as evident andintellectual holding was not worth so much. In China, the largest crime whichis currently occurring is intellectual piracy. Unlike the pirates of old whoplundered the merchant vessels and ports of the South China Sea, modern daylightpirates are more interested in illegal replication of intellectual rights. Frommusic compact discs to computer software to films to best selling novels, TheChinese black market is a virtual warehouse of "plundered goods". It isestimated that there are at least thirty illegal high tech factories in Chinathat can churn out over 20,000 optical discs a day. Americas Microsoftestimates that 98 out of every 100 of its software programs being used in Chinaare illegal copies . Because of these statistics, and because this only amountsto a small amount of the estimated piracy which occurs in China, programmanufacturers, worldwide, are lobbying the Chinese government to impose stricterstandards and greater restrictions upon the distribution and sale of illegalintellectual rights. In July of 1996, investigators from Microsoft led Chineseofficials to a plant near Guilin in Guanxi Province, where they found 5700bootleg windows CDs. The plant had four payoff lines. Three of them wereoperated around the clock. It was estimated that this particular plant churnedout 20,000 illegal copies of Microsoft programs a day. A trade report toCongress from the Trade office cites China as the worst violator of UnitedStates - copyrighted intellectual property. The report, which came days after