One of the great things about China is that you can buy pretty much anyhting, for a really decent price. Today, I stocked up on my already extensive computer game collection and bought a few more DVDs.

Here I ‘collect’ computer games/DVDs, like a person in the UK collects stamps or antiques.

Of course they are dirt cheap (6yuan for DVDs, 3yuan for CDroms), and the quality of the copies has become indistinguishable from the genuine thing. I remember when I first came to China, sometimes buying a dodgy copy; but the pirates are getting better and more sophisticated with their methods.

Which is probably a bad thing, but it doesn’t bother me much.

The Beijing government often trumpets about how it is clamping down on copyright and intellectual property infringement. Personally I think that Beijing has little control of what happens outside the major cities.

It is very seldom that the DVD shops/stalls will only sell ‘genuine’ copies and the pirated 6yuan ones are hidden away from view.

I once went to a local electronics market and noticed that the shops were empty, apart from a few token items such as CD cases/dust covers. I was told that the vendors sometimes have to hide all the DVDs/Computer games at certain times/dates. This is because someone from Beiijng/Copyright Ministry is going to be performing ‘spot checks’, and if they are caught they face serious consequences.
The local police (who are of couse bribed by the businessmen, tip-off the traders beforehand) Those that dont pay the bribes I guess are the ones that get caught and are paraded before the media as a testiment to the success of the Chinese authorities actions.

The thing is, everyone knows that this goes on. The copyright ministry people know that the shops that are empty usually sell pirated DVDs. It’s a very Chinese solution to a problem, that is, if you can’t see it happening, it isn’t happening.