Deming Liu wrote an interesting 14 page essay about the idea to use copyright or a sui generis to salvage Chinese folklore. Liu explains that copyright traditionally is concerned with the creations of individuals rather the cumulative creations of an ethnic group or region. And the danger that a sui generis is susceptible in practice to the abuses of private monopolies or state arbitrariness.
Read Deming Liu, Can Copyright Lend Its Cinderellaic Magic to Chinese Folklore?, 5 John Marshall Review Intellectual Property Law 203, 2006, here (pdf).