Stepping up the national fight against piracy, Chinese customs has reported having cracked more counterfeiting cases - up to 30 percent more annually - since China's entry to the WTO in 2001.

About 1,210 trade piracy cases involving 99.78 million yuan (US$12.3 million) were handled in 2005, and 88.3 percent of them involved exports, Gong Zheng, deputy director of China's General Administration of Customs said on Monday.

Speaking at a press conference on the anti-piracy fight organized by various government departments including customs, the police and the industry and commerce administration, Gong said of the 1,210 cases cracked last year, 91.4 percent were related to trademark piracies involving clothes, shoes, hats, toys, and plastic goods.

International brands such as Nike, Adidas, Nokia, Philips and several domestic big brands are the most commonly counterfeited products, Gong said.

Gong said the customs have also confiscated 210 million pirated disc imports since 1999.

Meanwhile, the police arrested 2,119 suspects for intellectual property rights violations in 2005, an increase of 56 percent from the year before.

Zheng Shaodong, assistant minister of the Ministry of Public Security, said the money involved in last year's IPR cases topped 1,28 billion yuan, surging 366 percent from the previous year.

(Xinhua News Agency March 27, 2006)