Chinese Netizens Protest Explicit IP Racism and Xenophobia: "Not Made in China" Trademark approved by EU's Office of Harmonization
The EU's Office of Harmonization in the Internal Trade has approved of a the "NOT MADE IN CHINA" trademark. The trademark will be enacted in the 25 EU countries if there aren't any objections within three months. Thankfully an online petition was organized and submitted on March 13th. With 13,000 signatures and 500 comments from CNStock and NetEase, the petition was handed into the Delegation of the European Commission on China. Dong Baolin, chief Chinese negotiator for the GATT intellectual property rights talks and former vice director of the State Administration of Industry and Commerce says:
"Trade marks like ¡®Not Made in China' is an evident discriminative rhetoric against ¡®Made in China'. A trade mark is the basis to build the intangible assets of a product. The ¡®Not Made in China' , as a trade mark if it is the case, will have intangible, but negative impact on China made products," .
Dong Baolin's comments prompts us to think about what deems this TM as discriminatory rhetoric. The bi-polar ends of Made in China versus Not Made in China, associates the former with low quality, uninnovative, cheap crap, and the latter with high quality, innovative, expensive crap. Well maybe the EU doesn't realize that China is racing to the bottom for low-labour work, but they are racing to the top. Refer to this post as China being the #1 place for R&D. At a recent seminar in Beijing, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz expained the significance of China's new innovation strategy:
"The 11th Five Year plan makes an important step forward. It's a major change, that is, it seeks to establish a basis of what it calls independent innovation. In the past, China has been basically borrowing ideas, trying to close the gap. What it recognizes that enormous amount of the rents that exist in the world associate with knowledge rents, the returns to the control of knowledge. So if China's income is going to be raised, it has to create a basis of independent innovation."
Well in light of this statement, this online petition shows that there is a group of people who are concious of the meanings behind "Not Made in China." It is amazing that 13,000 signatures were gathered since Feb. 20th, when the TM #004631305 for Not Made in China was announced. This is netizen activism at its best. Efficient gathering of supporters, collaboration between various online sites, and effective outreach to agencies.
Here's an audio piece by AsiaBizBlog that compares this to the Danish Cartoon Scenario.
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