China should try to improve the contribution of its scientific and technological innovations to the growth of its GDP. The developed countries have relied much on technological progress for their growth.

In today's international arena, competition among different countries mainly lies in soft power competition, a new concept that includes their national cohesion, the attractiveness of their social system and cultural influence.

As an important means of boosting its soft power, a country's cultural influence can be boosted through raising the innovativeness and competitiveness of its cultural sector.

To boost China's cultural influence, a rigid and binding copyright system is desperately needed to guarantee and facilitate the realization of these goals. This is common practice in countries with a booming cultural industry.

China's intellectual property imports still outnumber its exports, highlighting the urgency for the country to take some effective measures to develop itself into an intellectual property heavyweight.

China should try to increase the amount of its cultural products in the international market to change the West-dominated international cultural scene.

Currently, the US has more than 43 percent of the world's cultural market and European countries 34 percent, Asian and South Pacific countries have only 19 percent. Of the market share among Asian and Pacific nations, Japan has 10 percent and the ROK 3.5 percent.

At the same time, China should take more effective measures to promote the growth of domestic intellectual property and raise its contribution to GDP.

Compared with the rest of the world, China's intellectual property has been developing at a relatively slow rate. The sector's contribution to the country's GDP growth, at 6.7 percent, is also at a lower level. The proportion in the US is 25 percent, in Japan 20 percent and in European countries 15 percent.

China needs to try and boost the influence of domestic brands in overseas markets and change its long-formed image as a low-end processing workshop.

The author is president of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law and also director of its Center for Studies of Intellectual Property Rights.

(China Daily 05/03/2011 page8)