BEIJING -- One by one, familiar faces have been disappearing from the main streets of Beijing.
As China and the United States haggled over trade issues, police sweeps drove away the pirate music sales force.
And by this weekend, it was gone.
A victory for the enforcement of copyright laws?
Hardly.
Instead, the men and women peddling bootleg CDs -- driven off the main drags -- are in the alleyways.
"Stop selling music? It's impossible for me," said one regular peddler who identifies herself only as Miss Li. "This is my livelihood."
Miss Li's story shows why the U.S. government has been locked in trade talks with China for months.
U.S. officials say that American companies each year are losing billions in revenues because of Chinese companies' pirating of compact discs, movie videos and computer software -- goods that are peddled throughout Asia.
Ending this theft of "intellectual property" would help U.S. film and music studios and also would help shrink the U.S. trade deficit with China, which climbed last year to $30 billion.
The pirating of U.S. products goes far beyond the peddlers in Beijing.
Some of the best deals in Tokyo are the same illegally copied CDs.
In Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, an entire street is devoted to pirated jeans, scarves and recent Hollywood blockbusters -- all copied without the payment of royalties or licensing fees.
In China, the production and sale of pirated goods are illegal.
But even a well-intentioned Chinese government would find it hard to prevent those practices: The number of individuals involved is in the thousands, and authority is fragmented.
Enforcement is, inevitably, haphazard.
"Every time American officials come into town, the police drive us off the streets," said Miss Li. "But after they leave, the police go away, and we can sell again."
Even now, during the final stage of the trade talks, Miss Li was able to sell CDs, by flashing open a coat lined with pockets bulging with the discs.
"As long as the supply is good," she said, "we can sell."