The USTR Special 301 Reports: an analysis of the US hegemonic pressure upon the organizational change in China's IPR regime

Abstract

This study examines the US hegemonic pressure upon the organizational change in China's intellectual property rights (IPR) regime. Through the theoretical lens of the hegemony theory, the paper has analyzed the Special 301 Reports by the United States Trade Representative (USTR) from 2000 to 2007 via theme analysis and achieved four research results. First, it is the shared notion of the United States to integrate China into the Agreement of Trade‐Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) by upgrading and restructuring China's IPR regime so as to better protect the US IPR and obtain greater Chinese market access. Second, China has to make repeated compromises in reforming its IPR regime due to the increasing US pressure and domestic needs. Third, by controlling the international IPR institutions, the United States has successfully generated broad consent among even disadvantaged countries like China to continue updating their IPR regime in US terms. Finally, despite initial reluctance, China has gradually established, restructured, and updated its IPR regime and shown promising signs to take IPR seriously, which needs to be taken into consideration in the future US‐China IPR negotiations.

Keywords:

• the USTR Special 301 reports
• hegemonic pressure
• organizational change
• China's IPR regime

Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank the peer reviewers for their comments as well as Dr Canchu Lin and Dr Chin‐Chung Chao for their great help with the publication of this paper.