President George W. Bush's administration plans to challenge China's level of enforcement of its own antipiracy laws as well as its restrictions on the distribution of foreign movies, music and printed material.

While supported by U.S. movie and music businesses, the complaints have stirred unease among executives of other U.S. industries, including drug companies and high-tech manufacturers. Many fear that a clash over piracy could undermine the increasing cooperation they have won from local Chinese officials.

Ma Xiushan, deputy general secretary of the China Intellectual Property Society, said the proposed cases will be seen as a negative signal from the U.S. at a time "when China is working very hard to narrow our distance from the U.S. and other developed countries in intellectual-property-rights protection."

"The piracy issue is a world-wide issue," said Chen Zhaokuan, deputy director of the Copyright Society of China. "Many countries are facing the same challenges in their antipiracy campaigns. For China, we are a later-comer in this area, and it's natural that the sense of copyright protection among the Chinese people is not that strong. Considering how much work we have done to promote the copyrights protection and to fight against piracy in the past 10 years, we already have made many achievements."

U.S. industry groups that aren't expected to support the WTO cases include the Business Software Alliance, whose members include Microsoft Corp. and Apple Inc., as well as the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the drug industry's main trade group. Both sectors have made their own market-access and antipiracy advances and don't want to see that work disturbed, Bush administration and industry officials said.

To sign up for The Wall Street Journal Briefing please visit http://www.briefing.wsj.com/hktdc.