ZHUHAI, China — They really brought out the big guns for this one: Giant balloons reached toward the clouds. Hundreds of customs agents stood in rows, listening to marching music that included a chunk of “It's a Small World After All.” FM 95.1 went live. And amid it all, outside the Ping Pong Pavilion of the Zhuhai Athletic Center stadium, 15 industrial-strength wood chippers on Tuesday made minced plastic out of 16 million counterfeit CDs, DVDs and CD-ROMS.

        “This is one of the most important issues facing us today,” said Shi Zongyuan, the official in charge of anti-piracy efforts in southern China. “Getting rid of pirated CDs will give us a much-needed economic boost.”

        China mounts such a spectacle every few months — though usually on a smaller scale — to show that it is serious about stopping rampant product piracy.

        The events get lavish coverage in state media, but the real target audience is abroad — China's angry trading partners. Foreign producers of music, film and software say Chinese pirates are ruining their businesses.

        As China's virtually certain membership into the World Trade Organi zation approaches in November, such crackdowns are being spotlighted — and, China says, being carried out — even more than usual.

        Conferences have been convened, harsh statements released. In March, Premier Zhu Rongji went so far as to say that counterfeiting was making him lose sleep.

        Last month, China announced investigations of Rolex and Seiko watches, Kodak and Fuji film boxes and medicine bearing well-known British trademarks.

        But the event Tuesday in Zhuhai, infused with the spirit of a Communist rally, was extraordinary in both scale and organization.

        This was news release as public spectacle. Who — especially photog raphers and TV reporters — doesn't like to see something crushed by big machines that make a lot of noise? It made for great visuals, as organizers well knew.

        Zhuhai sits on the southern Chinese coast beside the former Portuguese colony of Macau. The region is both a major export-manufacturing base and the heartland of China's piracy industry.

        Chinese journalists were shipped in from all over the country to watch, their hotel rooms paid for by organizers of the rally. The event was timed with TV in mind: it began at 12:13 p.m., so state television's noon news

        could carry it live.

        And the sprawling patch of pavement on which it took place was ringed by giant tractor-trailers filled with pirated CDs. Each was guarded by a glowering young customs agent with an automatic weapon.

        The CDs, most of them unlabeled, were still in the containers in which they were smuggled, whether it was plastic shrink wrap or hollowed-out false bottoms of boxes.

        After they were chopped up, the shards of discs were hauled away by the truckload to an uncertain future. Chinese officials couldn't say whether they would be recycled or dumped.

        “Today's destruction represents a warning — don't try it,” said Zhong Yangsheng, a member of the standing committee of the Communist Party's Guangdong branch.

        Added Liu Wenjie, deputy director of Guangdong Customs: “We still have many places to look.”

        The only Westerner in sight was up on the dais with 40 Chinese officials. Mike Ellis, vice president of the Asia-Pacific arm of the Los-Angeles based Motion Picture Association of America, praised China for its efforts and said he believed the country was “committed to dealing with this problem.”

        Such public destruction of counterfeit goods, he acknowledged, is geared for publicity — but it has an important purpose, too.

        “Yes, it's an example to demonstrate what they're doing. But it's a reflection of hard work,” Mr. Ellis said. “You get the message out there — that what people are doing is wrong.”

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