47. Payments were mostly in Chinese currency at present except that Hong Kong authors were paid in US dollars. The agency has its own hard currency account and so far there has been no limit on the number of hard currency contracts it can enter into: so far as the agency is concerned, the author is free to require such a contract but the Chinese publisher will need to be one with ability to pay in hard currency.
48. Approval for the publication of foreign works is required from the relevant Ministry; the Agency can act for the author in obtaining such approval in connection with literary works and hopes to be able to do so for phonograms and films in future.
49. The agency does not at present have a regional structure but may establish this if business increases as expected under the new law.
DISCUSSIONS WITH PROFESSOR ZHENG CHENGSI
50. Professor Zheng was a prominent member of the drafting group formed in 1985 by the NCAC and an expert witness before the Standing Committee of the State Council which considered the draft legislation. Of all our contacts, he showed the greatest depth of understanding of international copyright principles.
51. He added several glosses to what we had heard from the NCAC. In particular he did not think that the fact that accession to Berne would confer greater rights on foreign works than on Chinese works would in itself be a political obstacle to accession: he said there were precedents in Chinese patent and trade mark law as well as foreign precedents, e.g. Romania.
52. He said that express enabling powers were not required in Chinese primary legislation because the Civil Code provides a general power to make regulations which were within the scope of the legislation and did not conflict with it. International practice would also be taken into account in drafting regulations, and he expected that this would be used to justify defining first publication in the Berne sense.
53. He regretted that sound recordings were not expressly regarded as works and that the originality criterion had not been clearly set out. He thought that moral rights could be waived but that the Civil Code would prevent this being done for profit. He also consider that assignment and transfer of rights was allowable under the new law because an express provision on inalienability had been rejected. He thought that the remuneration provisions of Article 27 were self- contradictory and in conflict with Article 45(b) and looked to the regulations to sort this out. In his view, if a written contract deals with remuneration terms it will apply:
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