The World Trade Organization is also playing a large role in this battle as it decides whether how to handle copyright infringement in China. Unless China's rampant piracy is halted, it will continue to act as a serious barrier to U.S. trade and investment in China and slow export-related job growth. China's continued piracy not only harms U.S. interest in China, but also undercuts U.S. exports in third country markets. The export of pirated computer software, movies, sound recordings and other goods has grown substantially over the past year. The developments of CD-ROM technology and the increasingly cheap and easy access to CD copying technologies have allowed piracy to run rampant, especially in China.
China claims to be working hard to stop the problem but U.S. losses almost double each year.
Attempts to impost strict copyright infringement in a foreign economy are proving difficult, if not impossible, for U.S. policy makers. U.S. trade representatives have identified over 30 majority piracy factories in China and Hong Kong. Each one is capable of producing thousands and thousands of illegally copied CD-ROM s each day. For example, one raid uncovered 5,700 bootleg Windows CD s. The plants three operating production lines produced 20,000 disks each day.