Appendix 6 - International Music Council

Trade Fair, 21 foreign investment projects and 23 domestic investment projects concluded
with signature of contracts, with total contractual funds reaching 731.34 million USD and
13.866 billion RMB, respectively.
Other Issues
1. Copyright law
The Copyright Law of the People’s Republic of China went into effect on Sep. 7 1990 and
was amended on Oct. 27 2001. The Chinese Copyright Law is an authoritative document
for the Chinese government to protect intellectual properties. It provides legal stipulations
for copyright and copyright-related publication, performance, audio-visual products, books,
newspapers radio and TV. Although as demanded by people of the music circle for many
years, the Article 43 (a radio station or a TV station may not pay remuneration to the
copyright owners for using their music works for non-commercial purposes.) was revised
as “A radio station and a TV station may broadcast a published sound recording without
seeking permission from the copyright owner, but should pay remuneration to the owner.
It
is not applicable if otherwise contracted by the parties. The measures thereof will be
developed by the State Council,” nevertheless, up to now, the copyright owners have not
received any remunerations as the concrete measures to be issued by the State Council have
not come out yet. The amended Copyright Law has not been actually put into force.
2. Examples of the creations
of “inter-discipline” music
Recently, many young people are chasing the world trend and are fanatic for pop music
but few have interests in classic or national music. This phenomenon
worries some
composers
and performers. Inspired by the combination of instrumental music and vocal
music in the international sphere, they have made some experiments on national
instrumental music. Typical examples include:
1) “The Twelve Girls Band”. Twelve young girls in fashionable dresses
play
national instruments and dance against
the stage lighting and settings. It is an
imitation
of the four-girl band Bond, also called “classic spice girls”, which is now
popular throughout the whole world.
2) “National Music in Costumes”. It is an innovation both in the content and
design of performances by the Central
National Music Orchestra. There are
tremendous
changes in both costumes and instruments. The costumes are no longer
the conventional unified dresses and meanwhile some instruments have even been
changed from wooden ones into fashionable transparent ones.
The
above-mentioned changes of the traditional national music instrument playing
have won high acclaims from the foreign audience and the young people
in China. The
“Twelve
Girl Band” was fervently acclaimed in Japan, where the sales volume of its
first record reached 2 million while the total sales volume reached 3.7 million.
However, these subversive changes to the national music have prompted doubts and
critiques from the music circle and scholars of national music. They pointed out
that
these forms of performances are merely changes in the packing, whereas the essence
and verve of the Chinese national music has been deserted.
3. An example of financial support for music diversity
In 2005, the Chinese Ministry of Culture established a “human oral and intangible heritage
protection office” and earmarked 400 million RMB required to invest solely
into this
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