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How Chinese Officials Hijacked My Company

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Re: How Chinese Officials Hijacked My Company

#211

Post by Ericson2314 »

unishark wrote: post #198
Ericson2314 wrote: post #79

Honestly I don't have much problem with protectionism. Flagrant theft is no good, but when the companies enter in the domestic partnership the IP transfer is rather more de jure. And if China didn't take any IP they would continue to be massively under-developed and just a source of cheap labor, be cause there's no way in hell US companies would have willingly fostered higher skills, higher pay there. Let's face it,…

> And if China didn't take any IP they would continue to be massively under-developed and just a source of cheap labor, be cause there's no way in hell US companies would have willingly fostered higher skills, higher pay there. We sell the training for those skills to anyone willing to pay as part of a huge education industry. You can just buy the textbooks on amazon or get many of them along with any other materials…

> We sell the training for those skills to anyone willing to pay as part of a huge education industry. You can just buy the textbooks on amazon or get many of them along with any other materials for free.

Education is necessary but not sufficiency, because the manufacturing secrets are sometimes intentionally secret, and sometimes simply the result of a process that isn't reproducible.

If you want a programming analogy, imagine if China had all the source code but no binaries. But worse, because there aren't codified programming languages to describe arbitrary industrial processes.

> Smaller countries in the west who couldn't possibly stand up the the big "bully" economies, and less developed regions like the US south, all have developed right up the cutting-edge with everyone else.

Do you know of any country (excluding tiny ones like Singapore) that became advanced without some sort of IP theft?

------

To be clear I am not arguing that the US + China relationship has been good or moral or whatever other positive quality. The US should have instead had better foreign aid policies to help countries develop---none of that IMF liberalization bullshit, but actual useful stuff like:

1. You can tariff us and we won't retaliate

2. We invest in your physical infrastructure

3. We give you IP and shit so your industry can ween itself

However, this very sweet deal comes with commensurately strict conditions:

1. Democracy

2. Unionizaiton

3. Gini coefficient maximum

4. Wage floor

5. Worker governance requirements.

It's really depressing that US foreign policy has been a objectiveless fucking joke entirely captured by the nefarious interests of corporations and bored rich people.

Re: How Chinese Officials Hijacked My Company

#212

Post by hacker_newz »

nsoonhui wrote: post #14

Not really off tangent: I won't be surprised if this attracts lots of comments along the lines "US/ WESTERN COUNTRIES did this before too and therefore no better than China". I just can't understand why when it comes to geopolitics, HN just can't keep the discussion related to the submission? Somehow US/ western countries have to enter the discussion as a bad benchmark...

How does preempting a hypothetical add to the conversation?

Re: How Chinese Officials Hijacked My Company

#213

Post by nyolfen »

georgeecollins wrote: post #176
Wolfenstein98k wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you out-innovate a country which has less regulation, more intrusive surveillance, more factories ready to churn out whatever you invent, more workers (and Uighur slaves) ready to do the labour for less, and no qualms about stealing anything and everything you come up with and copying it at a scale you can't possibly match?

One way is to make your country an attractive place to live for the top innovators from around the world. China can’t do that. This is a proven strategy for the US that is being sabotaged by the current US administration.

and yet we find ourselves in this situation despite this proven strategy. do you think this theft began in 2016?

the american manufacturing base and a great deal of its skilled labor pool has been gutted and hung out to dry for the last 40 years. we're only now waking up to the true cost.

Re: How Chinese Officials Hijacked My Company

#214

Post by pabs3 »

swayvil wrote: post #121
cheez wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please, describe something sustainable that doesn't involve keeping it secret.

Are there businesses built on open-source? I think I heard of such a thing but I haven't researched it.

Yes, the most notable one is RedHat:

https://www.redhat.com/

Some more are listed on the FOSSjobs wiki:

https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources#employer...

Re: How Chinese Officials Hijacked My Company

#216

Post by 5m17h »

xmly wrote: post #185
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.

Also, most of famous China companies, such as Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent and etc are also controlled by a foreign shell companies as well.

What do you mean?I don't understand

Re: How Chinese Officials Hijacked My Company

#217

Post by refurb »

oefrha wrote: post #42
Wolfenstein98k wrote: post #27

The scale of their IP theft is incredible. The CFO survey said it is happening to 1 in 5 US corporations, which is incredible if you think about it - but the trouble is the scale is larger than that, when you include what they steal via surveillance too. I can't see an answer outside of decoupling, seeing as they're set on their path and proud of it. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/28/1-in-5-companies-say-china-s...

Sounds impressive, then you read the article and realize they surveyed 23 companies in total. I don’t even know what’s 1 in 5 in that context. Four? Five?

They don't say how they picked those 23, so you're right, there could be a sampling bias. But if picked at random, that's kind of frightening.

Re: How Chinese Officials Hijacked My Company

#218

Post by sangnoir »

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.

> What about it? That was over a century ago.

...and more than a century before, the UK successfully sent a spy to China to smuggle out tea seedlings (which was illegal in China). It's the circle of (IP) life: upstart plays fast & loose with IP laws until they grow into the incumbent, then they get really conservative on IP laws to stay on top. In a hundred years, China will be just as rigid as the US is now.

Pointing out patterns is intellectually interesting by itself - I think those who say "It's different this time: we are civilized now" are the ones who are being less than honest with themselves; the laws and morals didn't change in 100 years, only the side certain countries occupy on the upstart/incumbent fence flipped.

Re: How Chinese Officials Hijacked My Company

#219

Post by unishark »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #211
unishark wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And if China didn't take any IP they would continue to be massively under-developed and just a source of cheap labor, be cause there's no way in hell US companies would have willingly fostered higher skills, higher pay there. We sell the training for those skills to anyone willing to pay as part of a huge education industry. You can just buy the textbooks on amazon or get many of them along with any other materials…

> We sell the training for those skills to anyone willing to pay as part of a huge education industry. You can just buy the textbooks on amazon or get many of them along with any other materials for free. Education is necessary but not sufficiency, because the manufacturing secrets are sometimes intentionally secret, and sometimes simply the result of a process that isn't reproducible. If you want a programming analo…

Secrets now? How did anyone ever develop in the first place if secrets were a dead end? Anyway, even if you saddle them with a presumption of stupidity, they can still do the stuff that isn't secret. You can make money on commodities and low quality products in a developing country with low costs. Whereas people in developed countries need to chase after the bleeding edge because they can't survive without the higher margins there.

Why are you discounting very small countries exactly?

No one would take your deal because the government is the problem holding countries back in the first place. China is an ancient civilization, not some new child that was just born and needs to grow up yet. This analogy is overly reductionist. Things that work in silicon valley right now also work everywhere else in the world. It is not magic ground. And I'm no fan of IP, but the system using it is clearly able to work here.

Re: How Chinese Officials Hijacked My Company

#220

Post by refurb »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #80
kiba wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Let's put it this way, if American companies had their way, china would still be low-education hoard of manual labors with no advanced industry. Obvious no country wants to end up in this situation. Let's promote actually good things like free speech, privacy, etc., and not draconian IP policies that just allow the same rent seeking giant corporations everywhere to fuck us all over everywhere. If we tie everything to…

Why would companies want "low-education hoard of manual labors with no advanced industry"? There would be no way they could buy American products.
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