The Chinese government will allocate a special fund of 700 million yuan (US$86.4 million) for enterprises to build up their own brands with proprietary intellectual property rights (IPRs) in 2006, according to the Chinese Minister Bo Xilai of Commerce on Saturday.

This is one of the measures the country will adopt to encourage enterprises to develop their own brands in 2006, said Bo Xilai, minister of commerce, at a meeting on building brands with proprietary IPRs held in Beijing. 

Bo said some Chinese brands such as Haier, Legend, Huawei and some traditional brands like Tsingdao will be models to lead the campaign of brand building.

Apart from financial support, the government will help enterprises with well-known brand develop new products, conduct technological transformation and set up research centers and sales network.

Bo also pledged to enhance the protection of IPRs to ensure the healthy development of Chinese brands with proprietary IPRs.

China is "powerful in manufacturing but weak in brand building", Bo said, citing that only four of the top 500 world brands are from China while 249 are from the US, 46 from France, and 45 from Japan.

(Xinhua News Agency December 11, 2005)