Can I own my writings and sell them too? A brief history of copyright in China from the late Qing era to Mao's China

Abstract

This article briefly reviews the growth of copyright, as an idea, an industrial practice and a state policy, in the context of social transformation in China from the mid-nineteenth century to the late 1970s. Understanding copyright as one dimension of cultural commodification, it aims to reconceptualize Chinese copyright history by focusing on China's development and the transformation of cultural industries and cultural control. It argues that private control over cultural products is not alien to Chinese tradition, and calls for a shift of attention from anti- or pro-copyright assumptions about Chinese culture to the changing political economy of cultural industries that gives rise to certain forms of cultural privatization. It also analyzes copyright's role in state developmental policy and in the reshuffling of social classes and hierarchy.

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