This is a succint and well-written book introducing a truly interdisciplinary approach to the study of copyright and related issues in contemporary popular culture in relation to the current development of Asian cinema, and questions how copyright is appropriated to regulate culture. It examines the many meanings and practices pertaining to "copying" in cinema, demonstrating the dynamics between globalization s desire for cultural control and cinema s own resistance to such manipulation.

Focusing on the cinema of China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, and film 'piracy' in these countries,...

Cultural production under Mao, and how artists and thinkers found autonomy in a culture of conformity
In the 1950s, a French journalist joked that the Chinese were "blue ants under the red flag," dressing identically and even moving in concert like robots. When the Cultural Revolution officially began, this uniformity seemed to extend to the mind. From the outside, China had become a monotonous world, a place of endless repetition and imitation, but a closer look reveals a range of cultural experiences, which also provided individuals with an obscure sense of freedom.
In...