Police in south China's Guangdong province have seized five illegal DVD disk production lines and 3,000 pirate VCDs in a remote village, dealing another heavy blow to the piracy of intellectual property rights.
Police in Zhongshan city said the production lines were found in the remote Xishan village in Sanxiang township operating under the cover of a slate plant.
With hidden video monitors, guard dogs and an independent power generating system, the illegal plant was located in thick woods amid the deafening noise of rock crushing.
The five production lines, two of which were not installed, and related equipment, were worth 15 million yuan (US$2 million), said a local policeman.
The seizure is unprecedented in Guangdong in terms of the number of illegal DVD or VCD production lines since China launched a nationwide crackdown on piracy in the 1990s.
According to production records seized at the site, the illegal plant began operating in May, churning out tens of thousands of pirated VCDs each day.
( July 19, 2002)
