China has prepared a list of punishments aimed at deterring companies from engaging in theft of intellectual property by restricting access to loans and state funding, Bloomberg reports.
The news comes in the wake of President Xi Jinping’s meeting with US counterpart Donald Trump at the G20, after which Xi pledged to address the US’s “reasonable concerns” regarding China’s IP practices. The theft of technology secrets has been a central gripe of US lawmakers in recent years.
The list, released by China’s chief planning body and co-signed by the central bank and supreme court, includes 38 different punishments and will take affect sometime this month.
Although a key issue in the trade war, some analysts are waiting before being too upbeat on the impact of the policy changes.
“We’ve been down this road with China many times on IP. The attention companies pay to IP theft has risen dramatically, and despite the great attention it’s getting the violations have increased,” said Scott Kennedy, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
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