On the CSIC Linkedin group, I responded to the question “Is there a cultural element to intellectual property theft in China?” by writing:

If they think they will benefit from stealing your IP and they can get away with it, they will do it.

And another member of the group, Buck from the China Performance Group, wrote a very thoughtful response that I am pasting below in its near entirety:

I don’t think that the “if they think they can get away with it and benefit they’ll do it” mentality is unique to Chinese society. In most societies there will never be a shortage of people who will take advantage of others if a lack of legal protection exists. The difference in the West is that a robust legal framework is in place that could give the impression that we are perhaps “morally superior”.

I think that rather than it being a moral deficiency, practices such as IP protection are just culturally not held in the same regard for Chinese as it is for us in the West. For example, I’ll often collaborate on reports with my Chinese colleagues, who are from relatively good backgrounds, proficient in English, and with a good education, and yet part of my job is to actively identify plagiarism. These are honest and hardworking Chinese professionals, and yet when I tell them of the legal risk it puts us in or the danger to our reputation that could result from copying and pasting directly from Wikipedia or Baidu, they are legitimately surprised.

In the West, we have it drilled into us that when we use somebody’s work, you have to give them their due credit, and teachers will diligently weed out plagiarism. We are often even graded on our annotations and bibliographies. I don’t know this for sure, but I would assume this isn’t the same in the Chinese education system. When I tell my colleagues that copying is fine, you just have to provide the source of the information, again they seem to have been previously unaware of this option. So you can see, copying is just not seen in a negative moral light in the same way it is in the West.

I would have to agree with Michael on this one. I think one factor is definitely the notion of personal space that exists in China simply as a result of the sheer size of their population. I think another would actually be cultural as originating from Confucian practices. If you look at the ancient system of testing and qualifying for prestigious government positions, those interested had go through rigorous testing on their knowledge of the Analects of Confucius. However, if you look at the examinations, it was not generally your opinion or analysis of the texts being tested, but rather how perfectly you had memorized them. The exams were an evaluation of your ability to reproduce highly regarded intellectual material. This went on for centuries, and though we may see something wrong with that in the West, it worked very well for the Chinese for a long time as they maintained a position as one of the most politically and intellectually advanced nations on the planet for hundreds of years. “Copying” is fundamentally part of the Chinese culture and in fact used to be considered a highly regarded skill.

Does every one agree with this? I think Buck makes a few good points.

——

Related reading: Why doesn’t China value intellectual property rights?