but the report doesn't specify what these paper compliance are.
Actually it does talk a bit about it. For example
The U.S. International Trade Administration
has estimated that U.S. IP-intensive industries
doing business in China have lost about
$48 billion in sales, royalties, and license fees
to various forms of encroachment on their
intellectual property rights. These U.S. firms
have spent $4.8 billion to address possible
Chinese IP infringements. An improvement
in intellectual property protection and enforcement in China to levels comparable to
those in the United States would likely translate into 923,000 new jobs in the United
States.15 And these most recent numbers are
from 2011—before the recent intensification
of China’s mercantilist industrial strategy.
After 17 years in the WTO, China still falls
far short of fulfilling its WTO obligations
to protect copyrights, trademarks, patents,
and other intellectual property rights. Millions of Chinese live on the illegal gains of
widespread counterfeiting of U.S. and other
foreign products. The Chinese, for example,
are “addicted to bootleg software.” According to the Business Software Alliance, about
70 percent of the software used in China,
valued at nearly $8.7 billion, is pirated. The
annual cost to the U.S. economy worldwide
from pirated software, counterfeit goods, and
the theft of trade secrets “could be as high as
$600 billion.” China “remains the world’s
principal IP infringer,” accounting, for example, for 87 percent of the counterfeit goods
seized upon entry into the United States.
So yes, China has good record on formal disputes at the WTO, but that's not the whole story.
The question behind the question is why is there are no WTO complaints along those lines. That paper, which has as first author one of the former US Appellate judges at the WTO is somewhat unclear on that. It does argue that the US could file such complaints, but also mentions that historically there have been zero complaints at the WTO like that and that it may difficult to distinguish/prove deliberate government actions in that regard:
One reason why some question the suitability of WTO dispute settlement for resolving
trade disputes with China is the lack of transparency in Chinese governance. A recurring
refrain from the United States is the difficulty
of discerning what the Chinese government is
doing, either directly or indirectly. When has
the Chinese government taken an action what in trade law is called a “measure”—that
falls within the scope of the jurisdiction of the
WTO treaty and thus of WTO dispute settlement? All too often it is difficult to tell, and all
too often the Chinese government makes it
more difficult with the opacity of its administrative regime. [...]
Most WTO
rules are “don’ts” imposing negative obligations.
Don’t discriminate. Don’t apply tariffs higher
than you promised. In contrast, the WTO rules
on intellectual property rights are “do’s” imposing affirmative obligations. Do respect intellectual property rights. Do enforce them. Yet this
affirmative aspect of WTO intellectual property rules has been largely unexplored in WTO
dispute settlement. In particular, and despite
widespread intellectual property violations in
many other parts of the world in addition to
China, no WTO Member has yet to challenge
another Member with a systemic failure to enforce intellectual property rights.
