BSA Urges President Obama To Prioritize US-China Commercial Diplomacy

by Mike Godfrey, for LawAndTax-News.com, Washington

19 May 2009

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) and 29 other prominent industry associations are urging President Barack Obama to make "liberalizing markets, enforcing agreements, and promoting rule of law and market-based commerce" high priorities in the United States’ bilateral relations with China.

In a joint letter to President Obama, the associations commend his decision to launch a high-level strategic and economic dialogue between the United States and China, led by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, to advance broad geopolitical and economic policy goals.

The industry associations also urge that industry-level commercial issues continue to receive high-level attention through existing bilateral forums including the US-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade (JCCT).

China is currently the US’s third-largest export market and a critical link in the global supply chain in many sectors, with “enormous” growth potential, the letter notes.

"China is a fast growing market for information technology goods and services, but presents numerous challenges for our member companies,” said BSA President and CEO Robert Holleyman, who added:

“The rate of PC software piracy in China has declined in recent years but remains excessively high, resulting in lost revenues to our members in the world’s second-largest PC market."

“We also are concerned about government policies that favor domestic firms and limit our companies’ access to the Chinese market. These are the kinds of issues that require persistent, high-level attention by the US government in forums like the JCCT, especially in the current economic climate," Holleyman continued.

According to the Sixth Annual BSA-IDC Global Software Piracy Study, China’s PC software piracy rate in 2008 was 80%, and the value of pirated software was USD6.7bn (GBP4.3bn).

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