Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Chinese Officials Hijacked My Company

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 266 posts

Re: How Chinese Officials Hijacked My Company

#111

Post by scruple »

murgindrag wrote: post #48
corty wrote: post #3

The article gives several possible ways to improve the situation. However, one critical way is missing imho: China forces foreign investment to always come in the form of a joint venture with a Chinese company. This practice needs to be forbidden or heavily penalized in all future trade agreements and similar international contracts.

Or reciprocated. Chinese citizens have invested a ton in US businesses, which is sort of okay. They also bought a ton of land in the US, which led to skyrocketing housing prices, and in the long term, if it continues unabated, will lead to the US paying tribute to China in the form of rents on US land. There is no upside to this. We got cheap Chinese plastic trinkets. They got our real estate. Didn't we do this to th…

> We got cheap Chinese plastic trinkets.

No, what we got was a new robber baron class of ultra-rich billionaires the likes of which haven't been seen since the federal government had to break up Standard Oil, etc... Which has led to extreme wealth inequality and a complete lack of access to _our fucking politics_ for the vast majority of Americans.

Re: How Chinese Officials Hijacked My Company

#112

Post by AlbertoGP »

de6u99er wrote: post #61

Reminds me of the TransRapid story. https://www.dw.com/en/china-masters-german-train-technology-...

Well, they did promise to cut costs to 1/3 of the German version, but they didn’t actually build it:

“Originally planned to be ready for Expo 2010, the controversial project was repeatedly delayed, with final approval being granted on August 18, 2008.”

“[...] In March 2009, the project was reported to be "suspended", although it had not been officially cancelled. The October 26, 2010 opening of the Shanghai–Hangzhou high-speed railway makes construction of this line unlikely.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai%E2%80%93Hangzhou_magl...

But they keep promising it:

Title: “China's 600 km/h high-speed maglev prototype completes successful trial run”

Reading further: “The prototype didn't run at 600 km/h, but at a much lower speed as an operational debugging test.”

And then: “According to CRRC, by the end of 2020, five high-speed maglev test vehicles will be rolled off the production line. Besides, a whole engineering system of the 600 km/h high-speed maglev prototype will be completed, which signifies China will master a whole set of the technology and engineering capability by that time.”

“[...] China aims to put a 500-km-long high-speed maglev line into commercial use by 2025.”

“[...] Using German technology, the Shanghai maglev line is a demonstration line. Since then, China has been striving to develop its independent technology in the field, where Japan and Germany have been taking leading positions.”

“Step by step, the country is making solid progress. Analysts say that the successful test on Sunday signifies that China has achieved the same level as Japan.”

https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-06-21/China-s-600-km-h-high-...

Re: How Chinese Officials Hijacked My Company

#113

Post by matz1 »

cheez wrote: post #76
matz1 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I can't see an answer outside of decoupling Maybe stop relying on IP as your business strategy ? Always be innovating so that you always be one step ahead those who copying.

Knowledge creation and discovery is the engine of economies today. You might as well say "why don't you let everyone live in your house for free" People who create need to be able to benefit from that creation.

>People who create need to be able to benefit from that creation.

I agree, its just the strategy can be changed to not rely on IP.

Re: How Chinese Officials Hijacked My Company

#114

Post by api »

matz1 wrote: post #113
cheez wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowledge creation and discovery is the engine of economies today. You might as well say "why don't you let everyone live in your house for free" People who create need to be able to benefit from that creation.

>People who create need to be able to benefit from that creation. I agree, its just the strategy can be changed to not rely on IP.

Feel free to suggest one.

Even things like Patreon likely would not work without copyright, as people would just steal the work and republish it on another medium. Open source business models couldn't work without copyright, and there is a minor rebellion underway in OSS against highly permissive licenses due to rampant corporate exploitation (e.g. "SaaSification" and rebranding and commercialization that robs the authors of even credit).

Virtually every suggestion I have ever heard for a fix to this greatly underestimates the petty avarice of humanity. If it can be gamed or stolen, it will. Some people have to be forced to treat others fairly, and there are enough cheaters to destroy any pure goodwill based system the instant an attempt is made to scale beyond small communities.

This is also why all goodwill based open protocols and systems are instantly destroyed by spam, trolling, and other bad faith usages as soon as they start to scale.

Everyone is not an asshole, but it doesn't take many to burn things to the ground.

Re: How Chinese Officials Hijacked My Company

#115

Post by matz1 »

api wrote: post #114
matz1 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People who create need to be able to benefit from that creation. I agree, its just the strategy can be changed to not rely on IP.

Feel free to suggest one. Even things like Patreon likely would not work without copyright, as people would just steal the work and republish it on another medium. Open source business models couldn't work without copyright, and there is a minor rebellion underway in OSS against highly permissive licenses due to rampant corporate exploitation (e.g. "SaaSification" and rebranding and commercialization that robs the au…

Some strategy I can think of: be the first to market, market yourself as the original creator, constant innovating, other people can copy but they can't control the updates and product roadmap, and you have the advantage of intimate knowledge of the product.

Another strategy is to create personalized custom solution. This would be hard to copy, unless you can copy the creator brain.

Re: How Chinese Officials Hijacked My Company

#116

Post by mattmanser »

kiba wrote: post #57
mattmanser wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you need to read up on your history. Here's an easy place to start. https://www.google.com/search?q=america+stole+britain+intell... There's plenty of documented evidence that America illegally stole tons of IP, often paid for by the state no less, otherwise known as industrial espionage. I'm sure they did it to all the European powers of the time too, probably plenty of examples of stolen tech from Spain, the…

Too much effort? America llegally stole tons of IP, otherwise known as industrial espionage. What about it? That was over a century ago. It still doesn't make China's industrial espionage ethical or right.

And America's ever increasing IP and copyright laws conveniently only last a century, don't they. Funny that, strange coincidence.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'ehtical or right'. It really depends on your perspective, and probably the place you were born.

People are dying that could be saved, right now, today, because of America's IP laws.

How is that right or ethical?

You could argue that without those IP laws, more would die in the future. But with how fast tech moves today, I think even a 10 year copyright/5 year patent length is perhaps too long to really justify that.

Re: How Chinese Officials Hijacked My Company

#117

Post by generatorguy »

specialist wrote: post #107
corty wrote: post #3

The article gives several possible ways to improve the situation. However, one critical way is missing imho: China forces foreign investment to always come in the form of a joint venture with a Chinese company. This practice needs to be forbidden or heavily penalized in all future trade agreements and similar international contracts.

I just learned that Tesla in China does not have a local partner. Which surprised me. Was Tesla an exception? Are there others? Regardless, I'm absolutely certain that China is exfiltrating every morsel of IP. As state policy. It's what they do. The only interesting wrinkle to me is that Elon Musk is probably okay with the knowledge transfer. A man on a mission. Whatever it takes to get humanity carbon neutral asap.…

Tesla is probably ok since the car is a platform auto updated over the air if China steals the design and can build the exact physical machine and even a version of the firmware it will soon be an inferior version of the product without updates. Kind of like how android phones that don’t get updated are inferior to those that do.

Re: How Chinese Officials Hijacked My Company

#118

Post by galimaufry »

murgindrag wrote: post #105
galimaufry wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Land is just an export like any other. China produces lots of manufactured goods, and sells them to the US. The US produces tons of valuable urban real estate and exports it to China. (Similarly the US produces lots of higher education, and exports it in the form of international students)

Land can be viewed as an export, but it's not like any other. Economically, there is a fundamental difference between finite, rent-generating resources like land, and value-added goods like Chinese trinkets or international students. Exporting value-added goods builds the economy. Exporting rent-collecting resources results in significant long-term harm to the economy.

Sorry, I should have consistently specified "urban" land. Urban land is not finite (cities grow) and is very high value-added.

American policy makers have chosen policies (eg zoning law) that make it easy to produce valuable urban residences. Now they have a massive competitive advantage in high-end residences, so of course they will become exporters.

Re: How Chinese Officials Hijacked My Company

#120

Post by dragonwriter »

galimaufry wrote: post #118
murgindrag wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Land can be viewed as an export, but it's not like any other. Economically, there is a fundamental difference between finite, rent-generating resources like land, and value-added goods like Chinese trinkets or international students. Exporting value-added goods builds the economy. Exporting rent-collecting resources results in significant long-term harm to the economy.

Sorry, I should have consistently specified "urban" land. Urban land is not finite (cities grow) and is very high value-added. American policy makers have chosen policies (eg zoning law) that make it easy to produce valuable urban residences. Now they have a massive competitive advantage in high-end residences, so of course they will become exporters.

> Urban land is not finite (cities grow)

“Capable of growth” and “not finite” are not the same thing.

Post reply on HN