The 2007 International Property Rights Index (IPRI) is the first international comparative study that measures the significance of both physical and intellectual property rights and their protection for economic well-being. The correlation of the IPRI Rank and GDP per capita is eighty-nine percent and thereby underlines the positive relationship of effective property rights protection and income.
Page 28 of the IPRI has a paragraph about China:
“China, which ranks 45th with an IPRI score of 4.4, has a tremendously high level of copyright piracy (scores 0.1), which lowers its intellectual property rights component to 3.5. This is despite the relative mediocre perception of its patent strength and trademark protection (5 and 5.3 respectively). In addition, China does relatively well in managers’ opinion of courts to uphold their property rights (6.9) and business property registration (7.8). However, the reader must consider that most IPRI’s data sources do not cover rural areas, which should play a crucial role in the judgement on countries like China, India and Russia. Overall, next to the high piracy level, the difficulty to access loans, the high level of corruption and the weak existence of judicial independence give China a low overall score on the IPRI.“
Read the complete report here.
