Gutierrez: China’s anti-piracy effort ‘unacceptable’

WASHINGTON — The administration is not satisfied with China’s progress in cracking down on rampant piracy of American copyrighted material, and one of the biggest offenders is the Chinese government, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said Wednesday in an interview with The Associated Press.

Gutierrez said it was “absolutely unacceptable” that a vast amount of the computer software in use in Chinese government agencies is counterfeit. He indicated that unless improvements are made, the administration would consider bringing a case against China before the World Trade Organization. He also indicated that the United States would be looking for support on the issue from other nations.

“The one thing that demands more attention from the worldwide community is this software piracy,” Gutierrez said in the AP interview. “It doesn’t reconcile with a country that is going to host the Olympics to be procuring software that is pirated.”

On the Bush administration’s plan to turn over shipping operations at six major U.S. seaports to a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates — a $6.8 billion deal that has touched off a furor in Congress and elsewhere — Gutierrez insisted the transaction would not jeopardize the security of the nation against terrorists and others.

“We are not turning over the security of our ports,” he said.

Gutierrez’s comments on China came a week after the administration released a 29-page “top-to-bottom” review of U.S.-China trade relations in which it pledged to step up enforcement of China’s unfair trade practices by creating a new enforcement task force in the office of U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman.

That review was seen as an effort by the administration to ward off attacks in Congress from lawmakers who contend the administration has not done enough to crack down on unfair Chinese trade practices that critics blame for a U.S. trade deficit that hit a record $202 billion last year.

Portman suggested last week that the United States could soon bring WTO cases against China in the area of copyright piracy and China’s high tariffs on U.S. auto parts unless the United States sees actions soon to remedy the problems.