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Samsung's $130 million investment over years, sold out to Chinese firms for $14 million. To the Chinese, theft of IP is just business as usual. Every single f
by toss1 8y ago
Samsung's $130 million investment over years, sold out to Chinese firms for $14 million.
To the Chinese, theft of IP is just business as usual.
Every single firm I've personally encountered that has done biz in China has either already had their IP stolen and sold in competition with it (or just products sold out the back door w/o label), or fully expects that it would happen and takes strong defensive strategies, e.g., sending pre-mixed materials to China where they only do the final process.
This is not sustainable. While the West thinks that we were exploiting China for it's cheap labor, the Chinese had a much longer range view -- they were exploiting our myopic lust for short-term profits to get our most valuable assets and gain long-term strategic advantage, both in both commercial and military technology.
This is likely to go down as one of history's greatest strategic blunders.
I wonder if it has already gone too far for us to recover.
- ObsoleteNerd 8y agoChina has been playing the "international trade" game for longer than most western cultures have existed. To ever think that the US/etc were taking advantage of them, was naive at best. China knows exactly what they're doing.
- FakeComments 8y agoWho seriously thought the US was taking advantage of China? The WTO riots in Seattle were partly because this was an obviously dumb strategy that sold out the well-being of the public for the enrichment of a few elites.
- teachrdan 8y agoThose WTO protests/riots happened exactly 19 years ago today.
- ggm 8y agoWhich historically is what the USA did regarding European ipr in the nineteenth century. And Europe did to China in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. Wedgewood porcelain and Sevres...
- newtothebay 8y agoWhat you said regarding US stealing IP from Europe is true. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't take defensive measure. Do defend our IP because that's our self-interest. Don't do it with the moral pretense.
- bassman9000 8y agoGiven the markets in the 17 and 18th centuries weren't as vibrant and open as today, and the amount of technology stolen by the Chinese today, compared to the amount "stolen" by Europeans back then, this comparison is plain disingenuous. Edit: expanding: the technology wasn't stolen in the same sense as today, because the Chinese couldn't not wanted to export and sell the technology back to the West. But US/Europe today are getting their IP stolen, and immediately sold to them. That's the asymmetry.
- viraptor 8y ago> While the West thinks that we were exploiting China for it's cheap labor, the Chinese had a much longer range view You're describing it like it was a planned action. Is there any reason to describe it like that rather than exploiting an easy opportunity?
- toss1 8y agoConsider that their govt calendar is primarily organized around 5-year plans, that they apparently have 100-year plans (and possibly even longer), and have many long-term plans such as the 'belt and road initiative'. Even if they didn't originally conceive of it as a plan before Nixon/Kissinger's 'opening' (i.e., the original opportunity sort of fell into their lap), we can be quite sure that once they recognized the opportunity, they have made very careful long term plans to exploit it. We can also observe that these plans are being diligently executed now.