For eight-year old Li Zhenni, a third grader in Jihong Primary School in Harbin, capital city of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, flying 10,000 kilometers from home to an alien city seems like a fairy tale.

The girl who loves to read such tales during her spare time now finds herself right in the spotlight at the headquarters of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), telling delegates from WIPO's 180 member states who she was and why she was there Monday evening.

It all began three and a half years ago. Little Zhenni, together with 139 other kindergarten kids and primary school pupils, portrayed their versions of science and human development with colorful crayons on a 100-metre scroll of cloth, in a high-profile activity to mark the world's first International Day for Intellectual Property.

Organized by the Heilongjiang Provincial Bureau for Intellectual Property Rights, the public campaign was to promote creativity among children and foster their awareness of intellectual property rights, according to bureau Director Zhang Xiaowei.

The paintings were later compiled into an album and presented to the Geneva-based WIPO, whose members were amazed by the children's visions and decided to put them on a show, entitled "Creativity by Children -- A Chinese Experience," during the 40th annual conference of its member states in co-operation with the State Intellectual Property Office of China.

WIPO also invited five of the young painters to Geneva, and Zhenni became one of the five lucky kids, aged between 8 and 11, to highlight the "Chinese Experience," to the warm applause of the delegates at the end of the first day of the WIPO conference.

"I totally agree with your ideas that IPR awareness building should start from the children," said Bernard Kessedjian, chairman of the WIPO conference, in an interview.

"Children will be the inventors and creators of the future," said Kessedjian, who is also French ambassador to UN delegation in Geneva. "It's in the right direction to educate the young about IPR protection to ensure a long-term, sustainable development."

"And the show itself illustrates the Chinese Government's initiative in pushing forward IPR protection," the chairman said.

Ron Marchant, chief executive and comptroller-general of the Patent Office of United Kingdom, spoke highly of the imaginative paintings, saying the Chinese practice of building up IPR awareness among the young would be crucial towards the country's development.

"That is actually what we are trying to do in the UK," Marchant told China Daily.

Sha Zukang, Chinese ambassador to UN in Geneva and head of the Chinese delegation to the WIPO conference, said a sound IPR protection mechanism is of vital importance to the nation's creativity and development.

"The nation's hope lies in the younger generation," the ambassador said. "The participation of the youngsters will help imbue a strong IPR sense in their mind, which serves as the most effective way of ensuring a sound environment for intellectual creation."

The efforts seemed to have paid off. When asked to define what intellectual property was, Zhenni replied without hesitation that it represented an "intangible asset" enshrined to "safeguard the interests of mental creation."

The words might not be her own but apparently the message was in her heart.

As Chang Cheng, a senior program officer of WIPO put it: "When the children know they should not infringe on other people's rights, and work to protect their own creation from being violated, a sound environment is well in place to facilitate creation, innovation and invention, the most powerful wheels that carry the economy forward."

(China Daily September 29, 2004)