This paper examines the U.S. hegemonic role in imposing its copyright standards onto the Chinese, who hold fundamentally different cultural perceptions of copyright in terms of innovation, fair use, and the public domain. A thematic analysis of the transcripts of 45 in-depth interviews of the Chinese copyright holders and consumers via the theoretical lens of hegemony reveals the following. To obtain bigger market access and better protection of its intellectual property rights (IPR), the United States Trade Representative (USTR) has been coercive in universalizing its IPR standards and policies by establishing an internal interagency mechanism and an external network. The study suggests that both the United States and China need to adopt the golden mean to realize the goals of its respective copyright laws.