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Chinese hi-tech researchers ‘told not to travel to US unless it’s essential’

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Re: Chinese hi-tech researchers ‘told not to travel to US unless it’s essential’

#51

Post by room500 »

DennisP wrote: post #47
pytyper2 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If he was smuggling, it was a crime then, it's a crime now.

If you're referring to Slater, it was not a crime in the U.S., and explicitly legal for quite some time afterwards. See the links I posted in another comment here.

There are many things previous generations did in the name of economic progress that we would find wrong today (slavery, child labor, etc). Times change and I should not be required to defend the morality of my ancestors. That is not hypocritical.

Re: Chinese hi-tech researchers ‘told not to travel to US unless it’s essential’

#52

Post by bilbo0s »

ggm wrote: post #41

The cold war experience of tit-for-tat has two lessons: Firstly, somebody has to make a move either at parity which is respected or below, and the "you blinked first" message has to be ignored. Secondly, there are always collateral damages. You can't afford to expel Russian diplomatic staff so you expel east Germans. You don't want to risk core staff so you send friendly nations into harm's way. Canada was thrown int…

Can't fight a trade war like a cold war. I actually think Trump is doing it right. I mean, if you're going to fight a trade war, you have to do the kinds of things he's doing. Now the problem is... economic reality. If the other guy just has the bigger market long term, especially if they can grow their market without you, you're just at a disadvantage. I think we can get some short term wins, but in the long term, we would have to prosecute this trade war flawlessly to come out on top.

That's just the reality of large markets looking to de-link themselves from global carbon energy resources. Long term, if we're all intent on ending the age of oil and coal, there's just nothing to keep everyone cooperating with each other.

Re: Chinese hi-tech researchers ‘told not to travel to US unless it’s essential’

#53

Post by ggm »

bilbo0s wrote: post #52
ggm wrote: post #41

The cold war experience of tit-for-tat has two lessons: Firstly, somebody has to make a move either at parity which is respected or below, and the "you blinked first" message has to be ignored. Secondly, there are always collateral damages. You can't afford to expel Russian diplomatic staff so you expel east Germans. You don't want to risk core staff so you send friendly nations into harm's way. Canada was thrown int…

Can't fight a trade war like a cold war. I actually think Trump is doing it right. I mean, if you're going to fight a trade war, you have to do the kinds of things he's doing. Now the problem is... economic reality. If the other guy just has the bigger market long term, especially if they can grow their market without you, you're just at a disadvantage. I think we can get some short term wins, but in the long term, w…

This trade war is not being prosecuted flawlessly, and as Ike or somebody like him said, no plan survives first engagement with the enemy.

Trump does not have a unified national intent behind him. I don't agree with him or his policies, in this or any other regard but trying to think dispassionately, I think appointing Bolton to signal strength of will demands having somebody more flexible to negotiate the real outcome.

For example, Trump is probably going to lose the trade war over Iran. They need Boeing spares but if he continues to blackball Iranian trade the future air fleet will be Airbus with loans from Germany and France.

Trump is going to lose a trade war in China because China holds far more US debt than Americans hold Chinese debt and China has far more market reach into emerging markets in Africa since the decision to decouple trade and local politics was made clear: you can trade with China and continue to repress your own people or trade with America and have to clean up your act.

Re: Chinese hi-tech researchers ‘told not to travel to US unless it’s essential’

#54

Post by bilbo0s »

eganist wrote: post #50

Surprising amount of support for IP theft here today. The US got away with it because countries like the UK couldn't police it during the industrial revolution. Whoops. The Chinese got away with it because the US couldn't police it on the global stage. Whoops. --- But the US might've found a way to police it effectively now... soooo why would we not? Why would we permit it because others historically got away with it…

>But the US might've found a way to police it effectively now... soooo why would we not?...

That's just the thing though right?

I mean, if the Chinese are engaging in IP theft in a fashion that is both broad, (across all industries), and brazen, then how effective can our policing methods be?

The only thing we can really do is stop trading with them. Which is really not going to stop them stealing ideas, nor will it stop their domestic market from growing.

The reason every great power in history engaged in blatant IP theft, is because it really has been extremely difficult to prevent it throughout human history. (Greeks were really smart, so Romans and Egyptians stole metallurgy from them.) IP theft is just a hard problem.

Re: Chinese hi-tech researchers ‘told not to travel to US unless it’s essential’

#55

Post by kittiepryde »

devoply wrote: post #26
chmod775 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need to go that far back. Try 2013. And unless anything changed since the Snowden revelations, the US is still conducting (or attempting to conduct) industrial espionage to this day. In some cases they were in direct violation of agreements they had with other countries concerning such espionage[1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_espionage#Germany

If Snowden revealed anything it's that there is lots of hypocrisy involved and for the most part American citizens are in line with that hypocrisy as long as it does not effect them personally. And if we see China's behavior it's in line with accounting for this hypocrisy. Sure the US calls them out on it all the time, and they can't respond to the allegations... But similarly their citizens are on board with their h…

I'm an American citizen and I'm not on board with the hypocrisy. Everyone should follow the rules to the best of their abilities.

Re: Chinese hi-tech researchers ‘told not to travel to US unless it’s essential’

#56

Post by hemantv »

zxcvvcxz wrote: post #36
coldtea wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The logic is "if you've used it to become the richest nation on earth don't knock out others using it to become rich". And those that still benefit from the heads-tart due to their country/ancestors having done so, shouldn't play it holier than thou either. Not to mention the whole hypocrisy, since the US has used corporate espionage and actual spying on supposed "allies" corporations since forever and still does, pl…

>The logic is "if you've used it to become the richest nation on earth don't knock out others using it to become rich". Cool, so you have no issues with China, India, Africa accelerating their use of fossil fuels.

Not really unless US and West want to give subsidies to these countries.

Re: Chinese hi-tech researchers ‘told not to travel to US unless it’s essential’

#57

Post by owenversteeg »

coldtea wrote: post #30
polartx wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, because Samuel Slater smuggled cotton spinner trade secrets out of England in 1789, China is justified committing IP theft today. Sound logic

The logic is "if you've used it to become the richest nation on earth don't knock out others using it to become rich". And those that still benefit from the heads-tart due to their country/ancestors having done so, shouldn't play it holier than thou either. Not to mention the whole hypocrisy, since the US has used corporate espionage and actual spying on supposed "allies" corporations since forever and still does, pl…

To be fair, a lot of countries used methods to get rich (or try to) that are absolutely despicable and far, far worse than IP theft: slavery, colonization, straight up plundering, genocide, war. Basically every country of moderate size and of decent wealth today has at least part of that wealth attributable to something that could be called truly and utterly despicable.

I think that until maybe 70 years ago, countries did whatever they could to get ahead. If it was possible to accomplish, and it provided an advantage for the country, the country would do it. Nowadays, countries mostly do what they can get away with. The amount of things they can get away with has shrunk over the years, but there's still a hell of a lot of unexpected leeway, particularly if you have something someone else wants. For example, you can infer that Europe having cheap natural gas is more important than doing something about the Ukraine-Russia conflict.

Ultimately, that's it: in 2018, countries can enforce IP law a bit better than 300 years ago, and as a result they are going to. I don't think there's any American campaign to be more lenient on China for IP theft and I don't see such a campaign gaining traction. It certainly is interesting to watch the whole thing play out though.

Re: Chinese hi-tech researchers ‘told not to travel to US unless it’s essential’

#58

Post by ArchTypical »

ggm wrote: post #53
bilbo0s wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't fight a trade war like a cold war. I actually think Trump is doing it right. I mean, if you're going to fight a trade war, you have to do the kinds of things he's doing. Now the problem is... economic reality. If the other guy just has the bigger market long term, especially if they can grow their market without you, you're just at a disadvantage. I think we can get some short term wins, but in the long term, w…

This trade war is not being prosecuted flawlessly, and as Ike or somebody like him said, no plan survives first engagement with the enemy. Trump does not have a unified national intent behind him. I don't agree with him or his policies, in this or any other regard but trying to think dispassionately, I think appointing Bolton to signal strength of will demands having somebody more flexible to negotiate the real outco…

> Trump is probably going to lose the trade war over Iran

Who cares what "Trump" loses? This is about the USA and Trump will be long gone before any of these situations are measured. The USA is not starting a trade war with Iran (first time I've ever heard sanctions called a trade war), the US is enacting sanctions to hurt Iran without scaring allies like Saudi Arabia.

> China holds far more US debt than Americans hold Chinese debt

That's intentional and good for the US. If you don't understand this, I really think you need to understand why we sell it to foreign powers at all.

> China has far more market reach into emerging markets in Africa

That's a real problem which the USA is losing out on potentially. It won't be apparent for some time, since people who are industrialized enough to get out of self-oppressive warlord control will not handle foreign occupation very well either. The US answer is always to enable the counter-revolutionaries anyway until the US has someone they want to deal with.

Re: Chinese hi-tech researchers ‘told not to travel to US unless it’s essential’

#59

Post by stale2002 »

walexander wrote: post #46
roenxi wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That particular argument isn't really sound, because the question is one of magnitude. However it still isn't obvious why China should enforce US IP law if it doesn't want to. IP is the ultimate human creation, it has no basis in the physical world. If pretending ideas are property puts China at a disadvantage there isn't a moral or practical reason to do it.

There is no moral obligation for them to do so and yes they can choose not to enforce US IP law if they don't want to. The US can also choose to place massive tariffs on any goods coming out of China, making them highly uncompetitive. Their choice, it looks like.

That's mostly an empty threat.

There are dozens of supposed reasons to start a trade war with China, but most of those "reasons" are just saber rattling.

If we aren't going to start a trade war (or a real war!) Over things like Tibet, or the humans rights violations, or the million people that China has put into camps, then I don't see how something morally silly such as IP laws would be the tipping point.

Re: Chinese hi-tech researchers ‘told not to travel to US unless it’s essential’

#60

Post by reaperducer »

DennisP wrote: post #49
walexander wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no moral obligation for them to do so and yes they can choose not to enforce US IP law if they don't want to. The US can also choose to place massive tariffs on any goods coming out of China, making them highly uncompetitive. Their choice, it looks like.

In which case China does the same thing back to us, as we've been seeing lately. Most economists think this sort of thing does more harm than good.

Most economists think this sort of thing does more harm than good.

Only in a hypothetical scenario where it's a battle of equals.

But China has worked itself into a corner now for several reasons:

1. It imports so little from the U.S. that it's almost out of stuff to put tariffs on.

2. Most of the things it imports from the U.S. are used in manufacturing in China, and then sold back to the U.S. as a finished product. So China's own tariff makes Chinese goods more expensive and less attractive in the U.S.

3. China still needs to import a metric ass-ton of soybeans from the U.S. It tried getting them elsewhere, like Brazil, but every other soybean-growing country saw the opportunity and raised prices. So putting additional tariffs on American soybeans will make food cost more in China, and there's nothing China can do about it.

I've heard there's additional pressure on China in regards to the soybean situation because harvest is already over for soybeans in the southern hemisphere. And you know who's sitting on a ton of soybeans ready for export? The U.S.

I don't know enough about soybean growing cycles to say if that last paragraph is still true or accurate, though.

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