This book is essential for any study of intellectual property rights or copyright in modern China. Because it is one of few books devoted entirely to this subject, The Politics of Piracy provides the reader with an indispensable source of information and a unique thesis on the problem of piracy in the People’s Republic of China. The book’s thesis is as follows: “The direction of external pressure and the characteristics of the institutions it is designed to change are crucial to understanding the effects of foreign pressure on policy enforcement outcomes.”
   As can be seen by this sentence, which merely states Mertha’s hypothesis, the book can, at times, be difficult to read. The writing does not flow as smoothly as it could but this reflects some of the harder concepts that Mertha tries to tackle. To defend his thesis, Mertha mainly uses empirical case studies as opposed to broad statistical evidence, presumably because statistical evidence on piracy in China is fraught with a great deal of unreliability.
   One of the best aspects of this book is that it devotes an entire chapter to each type of intellectual property: patents, copyrights, and trademarks. Because most books on IPRs deal with multiple developing economies, they tend to lump all IPRs together. This book treats each IPR as its own entity and explores their problems and possible solutions with the attention they require.
    It must be stated that this book treats IPRs in China from an obvious etic perspective and argues that most reform in China’s IPR protection comes from foreign, usually United States, pressure. Mertha believes that this is a good and effective method for bringing China’s IPR standards into compliance with Western standards. However, one of the strengths of Mertha’s book, the penultimate chapter, discusses problems with his thesis and his approach to the subject. As a consequence, this book is very valuable to the topic of intellectual property rights in China despite its sometimes difficult prose.
   The value of this book in relation to my thesis is that the book illustrates one aspect of the relationship between China and the US. This book shows that by pressuring China, the United States has achieved higher standards of IPR protection. To my thesis, this suggests that as China has become more important economically, it has also become more important regarding IPR. This importance proves a correlation between the strength of the economy and the strength of IPRs that goes well toward advancing the argument for China's gradual improvement of IPRs.