China’s newly formed General Administration of Press and Publication has banned the publication and sale of 19 business books that contain “false information,” although what the false information was has not been identified. It is the “first batch of publications banned by the press watchdog in its nationwide campaign of disciplining the publication industry, which began in February this year,” notes a China Daily report. However, the move is somewhat confusing to observers, because the GAPP was thought to have been formed to counter China’s rampant book piracy, and “According to the administration, false and fake publications are different from pirated publications. They are published by legal publishing houses and are sold through legal bookstores. They often make up writers and comments, use titles and information of popular overseas books or counterfeit works of popular Chinese writers.” Meanwhile, another China Daily article by Xie Ye takes a look at the piracy scene: “In big cities in China, pirated books are everywhere from shabby tricycles along bustling streets to small, gloomy book stores. Vendors hawk the latest in pulp fiction, biographies, ancient emperors even middle school textbooks. It appears to be easy to commit ‘intellectual property theft.’ Publishers that pirate books stroll around the big State-owned Xinhua bookstores and buy the best-sellers. Then, they photocopy and print in bulk in dingy underground publishing workshops in nearby villages. Once printed, they distribute the books to local wholesalers.”