Mediating Foreign Norms and Local Imperatives – Intellectual Property ‘Law’ as between the East and the West : From Imperial to ‘Modern’

China is recognized as one of the oldest continuous civilizations in the world and its economic and technological development has, arguably, been a world forerunner for a number of centuries. This article explores the motivation behind protection of property rights in the East, with a focus on imperial China (i.e. 221 BC to AD 1911) followed by efforts in China to regulate the reproduction of literary, innovation and creation prior to the 20th century, which highlight neither a formal or an informal counterpart to major forms of intellectual property (i.e. including copyright, patents and trademarks). While there exists scholarly work concerning intellectual property rights in select countries in the East, this paper takes the view that the recognition of intellectual property and indeed its regulation in China appears to have been curtailed (a view quite distinct to advanced) by both institutional and cultural factors. An understanding of this back-drop is paramount in forming an appreciation of the dynamics not only in the rather gradual implementation of intellectual property rights in China, but also increased trade relations between China and the West