Copyright piracy and other intellectual property right (IPR) infringements in developing countries have become serious problems for many developed countries. Intellectual property (IP)-oriented industries in developed countries fear that piracy will impact their revenues. In the U.S., the IP industry usually lobbies the government to pressure countries with serious piracy problems to protect IP. Though the US trade representative takes an aggressive negotiating stance in this area, the U.S. IP industry and government never seem satisfied with the results. This paper builds a system dynamics model to gain insight into the interactions involving the IPR issue between the U.S. government, the U.S. IP industry, China’s government, and China’s local governments. Through this model, the historical behaviors between the U.S. and China will be examined to show that U.S. pressures do improve China’s IP protection while other factors weaken China’s effort to protect IP.