Although this isn’t comparative (except for a bit with Japan), to a Western reader what’s most striking is how Chinese printers were, like London printers, the driving force behind copyright-like rights rather than authors. Indeed, Chinese printers were more explicit about protecting printers and printers’ blocks—ownership of the physical medium from which books were printed was often the foundation of claims, rather than authorship, which was especially important because many books were translated from Japanese or from European languages. Many claimants of banquan (literally “the right to printing blocks”)/copyright were unauthorized translators (or their printers).

Like London printers, they also attempted to achieve through guild regulation what they couldn’t get from the state, with mixed results. The guilds focused on unauthorized copying of printing blocks; anyone who possessed their own blocks, even of the same work, was generally allowed to use those. Wang argues against William Alford’s well-known argument that copyright was alien to Chinese legal thought and thus not integrated for a long time, though a lot of the story here is fairly consistent with Alford’s—publishers did assert property claims, but they were not successful for a long time (just as London publishers failed for a while). Wang emphasizes uncertainty and contestation rather than a clear progression, which seems fair. It was also interesting that printers sometimes tried to deploy trademark, rather than copyright, against pirates.

There were also “Chinese characteristics” to this story, such as the specific ideology that forced authors to downplay interest in remuneration in favor of contributions to state and society. When reform got rid of the old civil service examination procedure, it was a huge shock to the system and publishers rushed in to provide guides to the new knowledge, often badly translated and pieced together, replacing the earlier works that prospective government officials had studied. When they sought state-granted monopolies, then, printers emphasized the value of their specific works—leaving them vulnerable to criticism of their worth. As with English printing, copyright and licensing/censorship often went hand in hand; publishers used the Ministry of Education’s review as advertising for the quality of their textbooks, but also complained that the Ministry didn’t bother reviewing (and thus granting rights in) popular works of fiction.

Under Communist rule, things got much harder for authors, who were supposed to be regular laborers, but working under pay scales that didn’t reward laborious/intensive work, while popular writers could still become quite wealthy (until they were denounced for rightist sympathies). The Communists were also ambivalent about piracy; they’d encouraged and engaged in unauthorized copying to spread the ideological word. ( )