2. The representative of China said that his delegation had concerns with putting this item on the agenda. The position of China, as well as that of other developing countries, had always been that the enforcement of IPRs was not within the mandate of the TRIPS Council, that such discussion would go against the spirit of Article 1.1 of the TRIPS Agreement and that it would only duplicate the work that was already being done by other international organizations, especially the WIPO Advisory Committee on Enforcement. Any substantive discussion of the item would therefore be a waste of time of this Council. Enforcement of IPRs was not an isolated issue and should therefore not be treated separately from the implementation of the Agreement as a whole. There were many other issues such as the relationship between appropriate protection of IPRs and the economic and social development objectives of developing countries, the relationship between IPR protection and the transfer of technology, the issue of TRIPS and public health and that of TRIPS and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which were mandated items of discussion and more importance should be attached to them than to the issue of enforcement. His delegation was therefore of the view that this item should not be put on the agenda of this or any future meetings of the Council.
