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In China, stealing trade secrets is called “打破技术封锁” (breaking the technical blockade). The U.S. does not even need to collect evidence through investigation. Ju

In China, stealing trade secrets is called “打破技术封锁” (breaking the technical blockade). The U.S. does not even need to collect evidence through investigation. Just by reading Chinese news reports and textbooks, you will find there are lots of Chinese nationalist stories about their hero technician / scientists steal western technologies. They are literally proud of it. I heard from my Chinese friends who work in the US universities in the field of EE, CS, material, etc.. Huawei actually has personnel monitoring their university webpages. Add working project to your webpage, Huawei could call/email you the next day (in Chinese of course) if they find something they want to buy to get ahead.

baroffoos 8y ago
Sharing knowledge and advancing technology for everyone is something to be proud of. Society needs to end the practice of hoarding private knowledge.
- sovietmudkipz 8y ago
  I think the idea behind intellectual property is to encourage people to take risks associated with developing something new and profit through their innovations. If all new discoveries were the property of the state/public then there wouldn't be a high incentive to be inventive for any given individual. It's like if everyone was a farmer but everything harvested was immediately taken from the farmer. Why would any farmer put in effort to increase yield when they would not profit from their extra effort?
  - ndnxhs 8y ago
    Its unfortunate that out economical system discourages sharing and rewards those who act selfishly. If the farmers needs were taken care of, they would push to make better tech to make their lives easier and provide more food for the rest of their country.
    - sovietmudkipz 8y ago
      The best system humans have come up with to meet the needs of the farmer is capitalism. Think of all the selfish actors whose countless innovations (big and small) go into making sure peoples needs are met. The irony of capitalism is that by each individual focusing on themselves society is the beneficiary. The farmers needs are more than met under capitalism than under any other economic system people have thought up (to date). That’s why innovation happens more in capitalist societies. Communism, as a counterpoint, is pinned on selflessness. Think of your brothers and your sisters! Work hard and freely give away your labor, for everyone will give you their labor. Think about the good of the nation! The irony is that this system minimizes innovation and maximizes a cruel society. Why should a capitalist society, whose individuals act for the good of themselves, have a stronger societial fabric than a communist society, whose individuals act for the good of society? Who knows, but I certainly am not willing to throw out such a proven system just because it’s raw “selfish” focus at the micro level makes people a little queasy.
  - naringas 8y ago
    I think that if we got rid of those incentives people would still innovate
    - tivert 8y ago
      > I think that if we got rid of those incentives people would still innovate Yes, but then they'd keep their innovations secret as trade secrets or they would only innovate when it was cheap and unrisky.
    - peteradio 8y ago
      If someone stole their invention and made money off it?? Why the hell would anyone want to invest time into that? Its not like the Chinese are pursuing some ideology of free knowledge, no they are trying to scoop for profit.
      - baroffoos 8y ago
        Why do people work on open source or give up time for charity? Not everyone is focused purely on collecting more money when their needs are already covered.
        tluyben2 8y ago
        > when their needs are already covered So few steps to go here then; many (by far most) inventors do not have that little detail so they rely on their invention being monetized to give them that. People in open source or charity often just have enough money/time to do that on the side, but most people do not. Needs basic income or working communism; both do not exist (yet or ever) so how would that work?
        peteradio 8y ago
        Because they want to.
        wushupork 8y ago
        Very few people work on open source. You will find that most people trade their hours for money.
  - jujulet 8y ago
    > I think the idea behind intellectual property is to encourage people to take risks associated with developing something new and profit through their innovations. No, the idea is to prevent other people from profiting through 'claimed' innovations. > If all new discoveries were the property of the state/public then there wouldn't be a high incentive to be inventive for any given individual. Most innovation is not done for money. It's done by people with genuine interest in the subject, often earning less than an average professional in the field. The vast majority of valuable R&D for computer(s/ing) came, and still comes from the public sector. > It's like if everyone was a farmer but everything harvested was immediately taken from the farmer. Why is it that intellectual property proponents always try to make analogies using physical property? Copying != moving/deleting. If I was a farmer and along came some poor hungry people that saw me farming, learned from it, then went and farmed their own land, I would have no problem with that. > Why would any farmer put in effort to increase yield when they would not profit from their extra effort? If we're talking about innovation, then because it could make farming easier, safer, more enjoyable, healthier, etc.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- ndnxhs 8y ago
  Its sad to think how many amazing inventions never get used because they are encumbered by patents or kept secret.
  - pkaye 8y ago
    Patents allow for the knowledge to be documented and the patent has a limited term after which anyone can use it. Without patents, more things would be kept as a trade secret.
    - ndnxhs 8y ago
      The majority of things in patents could not be kept secret. What we end up with is disposable products because every part is patented so you can't make replacements or other devices that are compatible.
      - Varcht 8y ago
        For most things, feel free to reproduce patented parts for your own consumption, just don't give them away or try to sell them.
        baroffoos 8y ago
        Thats a non answer. I don't have metal working tools sitting around in my shed that would let me whip up a replacement part for things. As a society we throw away so many things because they contain patented parts and the original company wont sell replacements or they sell them at enormous prices. Hopefully in the future metal 3D printing becomes common and cheap so we will be able to source replacement parts from torrent websites.
  - unstatusthequo 8y ago
    Then what incentive do I have to spend money and innovate when everyone else can capitalize on it? That comment is a demotivational one for innovation in that it doesn't reward the entity that spend time and resources making it a reality.
- ggggtez 8y ago
  This line of thinking is too black and white. What would incentive a company to invest millions in new technology, like a new cancer drug, if they have to give up their secrets as soon as they do? No one would bother inventing any at all. And what about nuclear weapons? Are we supposed to think that it's better if every tin hat despot could just download plans for an ICBM?
  - roenxi 8y ago
    > What would incentive a company to invest millions in new technology, like a new cancer drug, if they have to give up their secrets as soon as they do? No one would bother inventing any at all. Well, the incentives around research are a bit weird. I'm usually all-in on free market capitalism, but I have to admit that historically government sponsorship has a pretty great track record for research. For your specific question though, the answer could easily be because someone paid them up front to develop a new cancer drug. There is no question that companies that synthesise drugs are incentivised to research new products and deploy them as a stream of new and more effective drugs entering the market will cause it to grow in size and hence increase their profits. It is a question of debate about whether the current American IP system or natural incentives would give a better result overall. > And what about nuclear weapons? Are we supposed to think that it's better if every tin hat despot could just download plans for an ICBM? Splitting hairs, but it is debatable if building ICBMs is 'private knowledge' for the grandparent comment. That sort of tech is probably more of a grey-area public-knowledge style. It certainly isn't protected by the IP system, because then someone would be selling ICBMs to tin hat dictators. It isn't used in products that are sold to private entities either (I hope!).
    - jmh530 8y ago
      Nuclear weapons are a good example of IP theft though. Russia stole plans from the US for nuclear weapons to get ahead. The US literally executed people for their role in it.
      - baroffoos 8y ago
        Which was also a good thing. Now every country has them, no one will use them because there is no longer any power imbalance.
- nosequel 8y ago
  China stole trade secrets and technology from US Steel and Alcor (aluminum) that allowed them to catch up in technology at an unreasonable pace. This is just one huge example. They don't innovate, they steal and then copy, undercutting others' costs. The US metal producing industry has taken a huge hit and they were the ones to put the R&D money into the production technology.
  - skybrian 8y ago
    Okay, but who decides what a "reasonable" pace is? Isn't more competition better? It's not school and you don't need to do your own work.
  - bigger_cheese 8y ago
    Do you have more info about this? I work in Steel and I admit I don't have a large high level picture of things, my understanding/perception is the tech innovation in recent decades have come largely from JKT (Japan, Korea, Taiwan) region those countries have the modern plants that are technologically interesting, my understanding is US plants are mostly older previous generation technology so I find it dubious that trade secrets from US plants would have much value any info would be less relevant to modern style plants being built in China. I'm aware there is a lot of shades of grey around large commercially sensitive ore contract negotiations etc - see Stern Hu case https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-04/stern-hu-explainer-why-china-jailed-the-former-mining-executive/9936578 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-04/stern-hu-explainer-wh...
    - chillacy 8y ago
      Not the parent, but I recall that Deng Xiaoping basically kicked off China's steel industry by buying a modern steel plant from Japan for a not insignificant portion of China's total GDP at the time. It was a risky investment which paid off.
- peteradio 8y ago
  Ya how dare anyone make money from their well researched work!!!
vkou 8y ago
> Just by reading Chinese news reports and textbooks, you will find there are lots of Chinese nationalist stories about their hero technician / scientists steal western technologies. They are literally proud of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Slater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Slater > He memorized the designs of textile factory machinery as an apprentice to a pioneer in the British industry before migrating to the United States at the age of 21. He designed the first textile mills in the US and later went into business for himself, developing a family business with his sons. Slater memorized these trade secrets, because any papers containing these designs would have been confiscated from him. Consider also the brain drain, wherein educated professionals have, over the past few decades, been siphoned out of the developing world, attracted by higher remuneration in the West. This is not a dissimilar process, but it is operating in reverse.
- yumraj 8y ago
  I don't know who you are or what your agenda is, but any sane person would argue that citing something that happened in early 1800s does not make the same thing OK in 2019.
  - vkou 8y ago
    Why not? China is ~200 years late in industrializing, mostly because of centuries of colonial plunder (And a few decades of communist misrule). There's a very simple formula for getting your country caught up to the rest of the world. Steal as much as you can, until you pull yourself up to the level of your neighbours. Every developed nation has either done this, or piggy-backed off a bigger neighbour who has. Just because we've already gone down this path, doesn't give us any moral high-ground for pulling the ladder up after us. And it works, too. Look at the quality of life in China, compared to India... Or Vietnam.
    - malandrew 8y ago
      It's really simple. I and many others quite enjoy the peripheral benefits of living the world's #1 economy. We're #1 because of size and productivity per capita. If another country with a larger population matched us in productivity, they would be the #1 economy and would get benefits that I and many others living in the US enjoy. One of those benefits is generally spreading democratic ideals and promoting natural rights, such as free speech, private property, etc. Any country whose values contradict those values threatens me if they become the most economically powerful country. With this in mind, it's imperative that we pull up the ladder behind us if we want to maintain the lead that protects our values. If/When China gets the lead, you can be certain that they'll pull up the ladder behind them, leaving us in a position of dependency. I don't care if some podunk country does this. I do care if a country the size of China does this because my life is better so long as I'm on the winning team. A big difference between the US and China, is that any foreigner can move to the US to contribute to and enjoy the benefits of being #1. If China becomes #1, that option won't be available in practical terms, because China is essentially a homogenous ethnostate with an almost impossibly difficult path to naturalization for those that were not born there.
z2 8y ago
Interesting--is this a euphemism ingrained in industries, or is this explicitly defined somewhere? I just searched for some articles (limited, using Google translate), and the articles mainly glorify research work, and sometimes talk about reverse engineering. The latter is a gray area, and maybe I'm missing the point, but these articles are along the lines of, "We've broken through the technical blockade on satellite positioning with our own Beidou system!" and not, "Hooray, we broke the evil western monopoly by stealing their technology!" http://news.baidu.com/ns?word=打破技术封锁 http://news.baidu.com/ns?word=打破技术封锁
charlesdm 8y ago
> Huawei could call/email you the next day (in Chinese of course) if they find something they want to buy to get ahead. That's not stealing? That's just acquiring interesting tech.
- kuhhk 8y ago
  I worked at a competitor of them, across the street from Huawei. It was common knowledge that they interviewed people without the intention to hire them, acted super interested, and asked increasingly pointed questions to get you to violate your NDAs, and describe projects you shouldn’t. And they would do the same to those they hired. These are personal anecdotes, but I’m not surprised by these accusations.
  - judge2020 8y ago
    This is sometimes called brain rape, and here's an obligatory Silicon Valley scene about it - https://youtu.be/JlwwVuSUUfc https://youtu.be/JlwwVuSUUfc
  - charlesdm 8y ago
    Hey, people are stupid. I don't think Huawei is the only company doing that..
    - j16sdiz 8y ago
      They provide "scholarship" for "best innovator" in Hong Kong Universities. Years passed, the innovative idea are stolen, the scholarship are never paid.
  - geomark 8y ago
    I worked at a company that did chip design work for contract. Our bright biz dev director tried to land a deal with Huawei. Huawei kept asking detailed questions about how we would design certain features that they wanted in their chips. So our genius management would assign some of our engineers work out conceptual designs to show Huawei, detailed enough that you could jump right into HDL coding of them. It went on and on. No contract ever materialized. Many engineering hours were spent doing a fairly signicant portion of the designs.
justicezyx 8y ago
> Just by reading Chinese news reports and textbooks, you will find there are lots of Chinese nationalist stories about their hero technician / scientists steal western technologies. They are literally proud of it. Citations please. These reports universally proclaim the protagonists‘ self reliance and preservation. These reports might well be cover up of the stealing, but your statement is to me plain ridiculous. Applying common knowledge, if Chinese nationals really is blatant to praise stealing on public news outlets, why do you still think any foreign company can make any money?!
bgee 8y ago
> Just by reading Chinese news reports and textbooks, you will find there are lots of Chinese nationalist stories about their hero technician / scientists steal western technologies. Can you kindly provide an example of this? I searched "打破技术封锁" on Baidu and first page gives me advancements from research. http://www.baidu.com/s?ie=utf-8&f=8&rsv_bp=1&rsv_idx=1&ch=&tn=baidu&bar=&wd=%E6%89%93%E7%A0%B4%E6%8A%80%E6%9C%AF%E5%B0%81%E9%94%81&rn=&oq=&rsv_pq=acba4a7200029b4c&rsv_t=91efHyrsTtD%2Bo0%2FXoJHYiCeK%2FzE0Jrmgice04Y3NqaRNSUlstHQmX4elysU&rqlang=cn http://www.baidu.com/s?ie=utf-8&f=8&rsv_bp=1&rsv_idx=1&ch=&t...
- j16sdiz 8y ago
  Search "打破技术封锁" + "改良" and see how much "improvment" are plain stealing with minor detail changes.
jobu 8y ago
Stealing trade secrets and technology has historically been very common among developing nations (the US included). https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-02-18/us-complains-other-nations-are-stealing-us-technology-america-has-history https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-02-18/us-complains-other-na...
- paul7986 8y ago
  It happens within our (US) borders where those who have tons of money and power yet lack innovation and innovative ideas steal willfully from those who do. Patent or no patent!
Puer 8y ago
Ah yes, more unsubstantiated claims about Chinese tech and culture on HN. Can you back up a single thing you've claimed?
- dang 8y ago
  Please don't post unsubstantive comments here regardless of how wrong someone is. And especially please don't post in the flamewar style. I realize it's frustrating to encounter these discussions on the internet, but we need you and everyone here to do better than this. If you know more than others, post correct information so that readers can learn something. Even if you don't persuade the person you're arguing with, the fair-minded majority will benefit. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
mikejb 8y ago
> you will find there are lots of Chinese nationalist stories about their hero technician / scientists steal western technologies. They are literally proud of it. Reminds me of the movie "Firefox" [1] with Clint Eastwood. The plot? An all-American hero sneaks deep into the UDSSR to steal a new high-tech aircraft. And I'm pretty sure Hollywood is still pumping out ideological crap like that. [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083943/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083943/
- taneq 8y ago
  Interesting comparison, given that Firefox was set in the context of the Cold War. The US and China certainly seem to be developing this kind of "frenemy" relationship where they're competitors and at the same time they're commercial partners. How different would the Cold War have been if the U.S.S.R. had done the lion's share of the U.S.'s manufacturing?
  - adventured 8y ago
    It's an interesting premise, however it probably would have been impossible. China - which has never come even remotely close to doing the lionshare of US manufacturing [1] - required enormous capital to be invested by US (and European) companies to build up their manufacturing base. That capital needed to exist first before it could be invested into Chinese factories. The US got dramatically richer from 1950 to 1970 (GDP went from $280b to $1t, during the strong gold dollar era), while it dominated global manufacturing. The wealth it built up in those decades of manufacturing hegemony is what in part enabled the US to deploy such immense capital into China in the following decades. The US wouldn't have had the accumulated wealth and consumer base to utilize the USSR as a manufacturing offshore and make the necessary investments, minus the post war domestic manufacturing boom. Unless we're talking about doing that at the very end of the USSR in the late 1980s, after US manufacturing had already peaked and begun to decline. (obviously this is all fantasy, because the USSR's policies would never have allowed for the scenario, but it's an interesting thought experiment regardless) Also, given the USSR's population ratio with China (~260m people in the USSR versus 980m in China circa 1980), it would have been impossible on a more practical basis, for them to output so much. The USSR's economy was never known for having world-class efficiency and scale of output. They never mastered high quality massive scale manufacturing. I'm skeptical the bureaucracy would have ever made it possible. It's likely they couldn't have output but a modest fraction of US manufacturing needs under any scenario. [1] US manufacturing output was about ~$2.1 trillion for 2018. Imports from China for 2018 were something like $560 billion. Approximately a 4x difference.
thetechlead 8y ago
> In China, stealing trade secrets is called “打破技术封锁” (breaking the technical blockade). Wow. This is a blatant lie. Where did you get this piece? The Chinese phrase means developing the technology to a certain level that an embargo no longer works as intended. There are plenty examples in space technologies - US prohibits NASA collaboration with China and there are indigenous innovation breakthrough from within like landing on the far side of the moon.
- largehotcoffee 8y ago
  >Simply put, Huawei's products have better quality and companies in the US can't compete with it. >I'm now typing on a Huawei Matebook 13 and carrying a Huawei Mate 10 phone. Those things have amazing quality and it's a real pity customers can't have them in the States. You have an interesting post history supporting Huawei for an account only a month old...
  - thetechlead 8y ago
    You're welcome to read all my posts and comments, and they are public. I have been reading hacker news for a few years and only recently wanted to sign up. so what's your point?
    - seppin 8y ago
      You are nakedly cheerleading for an authoritarian China and it's creepy and weird.
      - ahoyleo 8y ago
        So it must be shills to be supportive of China? Have you considered supporting China may be quite a popular opinion among the Chinese people both domestically and overseas?
        mrkstu 8y ago
        Most westerners appreciate a balance between supporting one's country of origin in a generic, thoughtful way, and unthinking jinoism[0]. Part of the mental maturity process is being able to see the greater affects of the policies of one's country on the wider world, and advocating for policies which enhance things for the greater world while still being positive for one's own country. That maturity process is naturally short circuited in authoritarian countries like China. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jingoism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jingoism
hungryhobo 8y ago
I'm sorry but this is bullshit
ezVoodoo 8y ago
As one who speaks Chinese, I find what you said is a blatant lie. In deed, “打破技术封锁” means to break the technical blockade, but by means of independent innovation, not stealing "trade secrets". Given China has the biggest force of engineers and scientists in the world, it is not so hard to understand. Fact check, Huawei is the only full 5G solution provider in the world; whereas no such company can be found in the US. So when you or your friends think the US has much to be stolen by China, think twice.
- hurr_durr 8y ago
  All this crying about how evil Huawei is is absolutely hysterical. Also interesting that so many westerners with a passing understanding of the Chinese language or have been to China a couple times are suddenly experts.
- dc443 8y ago
  I don't get it. What you wrote and what you're responding to are not in contradiction with one another. On what basis is what GP said a lie? What relevance does 5G have to anything? Progress in technology is progress regardless. I just watched a few episodes of Black Mirror so I'm in cynical mode. I'm not trying to be argumentative but it just felt more like a non-sequitur than anything... Progress is good (mostly), though, right? As for which economies that progress happens to bolster, well, let the chips fall where they may, I suppose.
  - johannkokos 8y ago
    > On what basis is what GP said a lie? stealing trade secrets is called “打破技术封锁”
    - close04 8y ago
      Can you show a few press articles in which that term is glorified as "stealing from the west" as GP mentions? As far as I can tell using translators, the usage is almost exclusively in articles talking about their own research, technical and scientific advancements, etc. Nothing that implies stealing. So is that "translation" actually a translation or just the personal interpretation of GP based on their preferences and understanding? P.S. I'm genuinely curious for those articles, just in case you're interested in supporting the idea that the word actually has a more "creative" translation. Shouldn't be hard to find given that there are "lots of Chinese nationalist stories in Chinese news reports and textbooks".
majia 8y ago
Most Chinese people are not proud of stolen technologies. Recently, a small Chinese internet company, Redcore, marketed a chromium based web browser as a indigenous innovation without acknowledgement. This sparked a public outcry in China and the company was forced to apologize and retract its claims.
EastToWest 8y ago
Equating "stealing trade secrects" with "打破技术封锁" is disingenuous. And this > you will find there are lots of Chinese nationalist stories about their hero technician / scientists steal western technologies. They are literally proud of it is a blatant lie. Sure, if you just want to feel superior, keep making blanket statements like this. But if you really want the West to outcompete China, you'd better spend more time on understanding the intricacies.
websterisk 8y ago
I read an article a while back, probably a couple of years (sorry, I can't find/cite). The observation in the article paints this "theft" in what they perceived to be a cultural distinction... Specifically, in the US (and the west, more broadly) we ascribe a great deal of value to figuring out "what" to do commercially and "how" to do it technically. Most of our energy around IP are wrapped around this value and defending it. The article had observed that for the Chinese, there was no additional value ascribed to the people or groups that paved that path, but rather that there was perceived merit/value in "doing" those things better. To use an example, identifying the market and technology and usage trends to develop a valuable product is no more important or meritorious than merely seeing/understanding that product and fast-following with some other advantage. And further, there is nothing inherently negative about re-creating someone else's work for personal benefit, after all, you still need to do the work of "doing" it. One of the conclusions drawn was that this lack of value around creativity and direct inventorship makes the Chinese a super formidable second place in many arenas but without the skills or cultural DNA to actually take the lead or be the expeditionary force... There are pros and cons to all of that (and some pretty rebuttable presumptions in the analysis) but I thought it was an interesting take that (if valid) sheds light on what we have seen, are seeing, and will continue to see.
- TStowe 8y ago
  People also make parallels to government secrets, when every government does the same.
- sangnoir 8y ago
  > One of the conclusions drawn was that this lack of value around creativity and direct inventorship makes the Chinese a super formidable second place in many arenas but without the skills or cultural DNA to actually take the lead or be the expeditionary force That's a bit much, don't you think? Pick any engineering discipline, then randomly pick any top US university and then count the number of post-grad researchers who happen to be of Chinese heritage, or people who were raised with, as you put it: this "cultural DNA". I've always wondered how Detroit failed to see Japanese competition coming, but I now have a front-row seat to watch this Chinese STEM "misunderestimation" unfold.
TStowe 8y ago
On the flip side, though not often corporately, the US does the same, as do most countries. I love how China gets pointed fingers at constantly for espionage and the like when the rest of the world does the same damn thing. The main difference is govenment-backing of corporations, and the blatant corporate abuse of such things. China for Chinese, and similar nationalistic views aren't exactly shocking given the behavior of our nation, and others toward the Chinese, especially under our current administration. The nationalism and racism is on both sides. And given the scale of China, well, do the math. Beyond this, the level of information published on the Chinese web is amazing -- I did product research for a Fortune company in the US and the Chinese research published freely put them ahead. 10x the startups. 10x the millionaires made. Every. Year. Everyone else is tiny and stagnant by comparison.
kuuspa 8y ago
And "on the horse" means "right away". Doesn't mean you literally should get on a horse and get over here.

baroffoos 8y ago

Sharing knowledge and advancing technology for everyone is something to be proud of. Society needs to end the practice of hoarding private knowledge.

sovietmudkipz 8y ago
I think the idea behind intellectual property is to encourage people to take risks associated with developing something new and profit through their innovations. If all new discoveries were the property of the state/public then there wouldn't be a high incentive to be inventive for any given individual. It's like if everyone was a farmer but everything harvested was immediately taken from the farmer. Why would any farmer put in effort to increase yield when they would not profit from their extra effort?
- ndnxhs 8y ago
  Its unfortunate that out economical system discourages sharing and rewards those who act selfishly. If the farmers needs were taken care of, they would push to make better tech to make their lives easier and provide more food for the rest of their country.
  - sovietmudkipz 8y ago
    The best system humans have come up with to meet the needs of the farmer is capitalism. Think of all the selfish actors whose countless innovations (big and small) go into making sure peoples needs are met. The irony of capitalism is that by each individual focusing on themselves society is the beneficiary. The farmers needs are more than met under capitalism than under any other economic system people have thought up (to date). That’s why innovation happens more in capitalist societies. Communism, as a counterpoint, is pinned on selflessness. Think of your brothers and your sisters! Work hard and freely give away your labor, for everyone will give you their labor. Think about the good of the nation! The irony is that this system minimizes innovation and maximizes a cruel society. Why should a capitalist society, whose individuals act for the good of themselves, have a stronger societial fabric than a communist society, whose individuals act for the good of society? Who knows, but I certainly am not willing to throw out such a proven system just because it’s raw “selfish” focus at the micro level makes people a little queasy.
- naringas 8y ago
  I think that if we got rid of those incentives people would still innovate
  - tivert 8y ago
    > I think that if we got rid of those incentives people would still innovate Yes, but then they'd keep their innovations secret as trade secrets or they would only innovate when it was cheap and unrisky.
  - peteradio 8y ago
    If someone stole their invention and made money off it?? Why the hell would anyone want to invest time into that? Its not like the Chinese are pursuing some ideology of free knowledge, no they are trying to scoop for profit.
    - baroffoos 8y ago
      Why do people work on open source or give up time for charity? Not everyone is focused purely on collecting more money when their needs are already covered.
      - tluyben2 8y ago
        > when their needs are already covered So few steps to go here then; many (by far most) inventors do not have that little detail so they rely on their invention being monetized to give them that. People in open source or charity often just have enough money/time to do that on the side, but most people do not. Needs basic income or working communism; both do not exist (yet or ever) so how would that work?
      - peteradio 8y ago
        Because they want to.
      - wushupork 8y ago
        Very few people work on open source. You will find that most people trade their hours for money.
- jujulet 8y ago
  > I think the idea behind intellectual property is to encourage people to take risks associated with developing something new and profit through their innovations. No, the idea is to prevent other people from profiting through 'claimed' innovations. > If all new discoveries were the property of the state/public then there wouldn't be a high incentive to be inventive for any given individual. Most innovation is not done for money. It's done by people with genuine interest in the subject, often earning less than an average professional in the field. The vast majority of valuable R&D for computer(s/ing) came, and still comes from the public sector. > It's like if everyone was a farmer but everything harvested was immediately taken from the farmer. Why is it that intellectual property proponents always try to make analogies using physical property? Copying != moving/deleting. If I was a farmer and along came some poor hungry people that saw me farming, learned from it, then went and farmed their own land, I would have no problem with that. > Why would any farmer put in effort to increase yield when they would not profit from their extra effort? If we're talking about innovation, then because it could make farming easier, safer, more enjoyable, healthier, etc.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
ndnxhs 8y ago
Its sad to think how many amazing inventions never get used because they are encumbered by patents or kept secret.
- pkaye 8y ago
  Patents allow for the knowledge to be documented and the patent has a limited term after which anyone can use it. Without patents, more things would be kept as a trade secret.
  - ndnxhs 8y ago
    The majority of things in patents could not be kept secret. What we end up with is disposable products because every part is patented so you can't make replacements or other devices that are compatible.
    - Varcht 8y ago
      For most things, feel free to reproduce patented parts for your own consumption, just don't give them away or try to sell them.
      - baroffoos 8y ago
        Thats a non answer. I don't have metal working tools sitting around in my shed that would let me whip up a replacement part for things. As a society we throw away so many things because they contain patented parts and the original company wont sell replacements or they sell them at enormous prices. Hopefully in the future metal 3D printing becomes common and cheap so we will be able to source replacement parts from torrent websites.
- unstatusthequo 8y ago
  Then what incentive do I have to spend money and innovate when everyone else can capitalize on it? That comment is a demotivational one for innovation in that it doesn't reward the entity that spend time and resources making it a reality.
ggggtez 8y ago
This line of thinking is too black and white. What would incentive a company to invest millions in new technology, like a new cancer drug, if they have to give up their secrets as soon as they do? No one would bother inventing any at all. And what about nuclear weapons? Are we supposed to think that it's better if every tin hat despot could just download plans for an ICBM?
- roenxi 8y ago
  > What would incentive a company to invest millions in new technology, like a new cancer drug, if they have to give up their secrets as soon as they do? No one would bother inventing any at all. Well, the incentives around research are a bit weird. I'm usually all-in on free market capitalism, but I have to admit that historically government sponsorship has a pretty great track record for research. For your specific question though, the answer could easily be because someone paid them up front to develop a new cancer drug. There is no question that companies that synthesise drugs are incentivised to research new products and deploy them as a stream of new and more effective drugs entering the market will cause it to grow in size and hence increase their profits. It is a question of debate about whether the current American IP system or natural incentives would give a better result overall. > And what about nuclear weapons? Are we supposed to think that it's better if every tin hat despot could just download plans for an ICBM? Splitting hairs, but it is debatable if building ICBMs is 'private knowledge' for the grandparent comment. That sort of tech is probably more of a grey-area public-knowledge style. It certainly isn't protected by the IP system, because then someone would be selling ICBMs to tin hat dictators. It isn't used in products that are sold to private entities either (I hope!).
  - jmh530 8y ago
    Nuclear weapons are a good example of IP theft though. Russia stole plans from the US for nuclear weapons to get ahead. The US literally executed people for their role in it.
    - baroffoos 8y ago
      Which was also a good thing. Now every country has them, no one will use them because there is no longer any power imbalance.
nosequel 8y ago
China stole trade secrets and technology from US Steel and Alcor (aluminum) that allowed them to catch up in technology at an unreasonable pace. This is just one huge example. They don't innovate, they steal and then copy, undercutting others' costs. The US metal producing industry has taken a huge hit and they were the ones to put the R&D money into the production technology.
- skybrian 8y ago
  Okay, but who decides what a "reasonable" pace is? Isn't more competition better? It's not school and you don't need to do your own work.
- bigger_cheese 8y ago
  Do you have more info about this? I work in Steel and I admit I don't have a large high level picture of things, my understanding/perception is the tech innovation in recent decades have come largely from JKT (Japan, Korea, Taiwan) region those countries have the modern plants that are technologically interesting, my understanding is US plants are mostly older previous generation technology so I find it dubious that trade secrets from US plants would have much value any info would be less relevant to modern style plants being built in China. I'm aware there is a lot of shades of grey around large commercially sensitive ore contract negotiations etc - see Stern Hu case https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-04/stern-hu-explainer-why-china-jailed-the-former-mining-executive/9936578 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-04/stern-hu-explainer-wh...
  - chillacy 8y ago
    Not the parent, but I recall that Deng Xiaoping basically kicked off China's steel industry by buying a modern steel plant from Japan for a not insignificant portion of China's total GDP at the time. It was a risky investment which paid off.
peteradio 8y ago
Ya how dare anyone make money from their well researched work!!!

vkou 8y ago

> Just by reading Chinese news reports and textbooks, you will find there are lots of Chinese nationalist stories about their hero technician / scientists steal western technologies. They are literally proud of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Slater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Slater > He memorized the designs of textile factory machinery as an apprentice to a pioneer in the British industry before migrating to the United States at the age of 21. He designed the first textile mills in the US and later went into business for himself, developing a family business with his sons. Slater memorized these trade secrets, because any papers containing these designs would have been confiscated from him. Consider also the brain drain, wherein educated professionals have, over the past few decades, been siphoned out of the developing world, attracted by higher remuneration in the West. This is not a dissimilar process, but it is operating in reverse.

yumraj 8y ago
I don't know who you are or what your agenda is, but any sane person would argue that citing something that happened in early 1800s does not make the same thing OK in 2019.
- vkou 8y ago
  Why not? China is ~200 years late in industrializing, mostly because of centuries of colonial plunder (And a few decades of communist misrule). There's a very simple formula for getting your country caught up to the rest of the world. Steal as much as you can, until you pull yourself up to the level of your neighbours. Every developed nation has either done this, or piggy-backed off a bigger neighbour who has. Just because we've already gone down this path, doesn't give us any moral high-ground for pulling the ladder up after us. And it works, too. Look at the quality of life in China, compared to India... Or Vietnam.
  - malandrew 8y ago
    It's really simple. I and many others quite enjoy the peripheral benefits of living the world's #1 economy. We're #1 because of size and productivity per capita. If another country with a larger population matched us in productivity, they would be the #1 economy and would get benefits that I and many others living in the US enjoy. One of those benefits is generally spreading democratic ideals and promoting natural rights, such as free speech, private property, etc. Any country whose values contradict those values threatens me if they become the most economically powerful country. With this in mind, it's imperative that we pull up the ladder behind us if we want to maintain the lead that protects our values. If/When China gets the lead, you can be certain that they'll pull up the ladder behind them, leaving us in a position of dependency. I don't care if some podunk country does this. I do care if a country the size of China does this because my life is better so long as I'm on the winning team. A big difference between the US and China, is that any foreigner can move to the US to contribute to and enjoy the benefits of being #1. If China becomes #1, that option won't be available in practical terms, because China is essentially a homogenous ethnostate with an almost impossibly difficult path to naturalization for those that were not born there.

z2 8y ago

Interesting--is this a euphemism ingrained in industries, or is this explicitly defined somewhere? I just searched for some articles (limited, using Google translate), and the articles mainly glorify research work, and sometimes talk about reverse engineering. The latter is a gray area, and maybe I'm missing the point, but these articles are along the lines of, "We've broken through the technical blockade on satellite positioning with our own Beidou system!" and not, "Hooray, we broke the evil western monopoly by stealing their technology!" http://news.baidu.com/ns?word=打破技术封锁 http://news.baidu.com/ns?word=打破技术封锁

charlesdm 8y ago

> Huawei could call/email you the next day (in Chinese of course) if they find something they want to buy to get ahead. That's not stealing? That's just acquiring interesting tech.

kuhhk 8y ago
I worked at a competitor of them, across the street from Huawei. It was common knowledge that they interviewed people without the intention to hire them, acted super interested, and asked increasingly pointed questions to get you to violate your NDAs, and describe projects you shouldn’t. And they would do the same to those they hired. These are personal anecdotes, but I’m not surprised by these accusations.
- judge2020 8y ago
  This is sometimes called brain rape, and here's an obligatory Silicon Valley scene about it - https://youtu.be/JlwwVuSUUfc https://youtu.be/JlwwVuSUUfc
- charlesdm 8y ago
  Hey, people are stupid. I don't think Huawei is the only company doing that..
  - j16sdiz 8y ago
    They provide "scholarship" for "best innovator" in Hong Kong Universities. Years passed, the innovative idea are stolen, the scholarship are never paid.
- geomark 8y ago
  I worked at a company that did chip design work for contract. Our bright biz dev director tried to land a deal with Huawei. Huawei kept asking detailed questions about how we would design certain features that they wanted in their chips. So our genius management would assign some of our engineers work out conceptual designs to show Huawei, detailed enough that you could jump right into HDL coding of them. It went on and on. No contract ever materialized. Many engineering hours were spent doing a fairly signicant portion of the designs.

justicezyx 8y ago

> Just by reading Chinese news reports and textbooks, you will find there are lots of Chinese nationalist stories about their hero technician / scientists steal western technologies. They are literally proud of it. Citations please. These reports universally proclaim the protagonists‘ self reliance and preservation. These reports might well be cover up of the stealing, but your statement is to me plain ridiculous. Applying common knowledge, if Chinese nationals really is blatant to praise stealing on public news outlets, why do you still think any foreign company can make any money?!

bgee 8y ago

> Just by reading Chinese news reports and textbooks, you will find there are lots of Chinese nationalist stories about their hero technician / scientists steal western technologies. Can you kindly provide an example of this? I searched "打破技术封锁" on Baidu and first page gives me advancements from research. http://www.baidu.com/s?ie=utf-8&f=8&rsv_bp=1&rsv_idx=1&ch=&tn=baidu&bar=&wd=%E6%89%93%E7%A0%B4%E6%8A%80%E6%9C%AF%E5%B0%81%E9%94%81&rn=&oq=&rsv_pq=acba4a7200029b4c&rsv_t=91efHyrsTtD%2Bo0%2FXoJHYiCeK%2FzE0Jrmgice04Y3NqaRNSUlstHQmX4elysU&rqlang=cn http://www.baidu.com/s?ie=utf-8&f=8&rsv_bp=1&rsv_idx=1&ch=&t...

j16sdiz 8y ago
Search "打破技术封锁" + "改良" and see how much "improvment" are plain stealing with minor detail changes.

jobu 8y ago

Stealing trade secrets and technology has historically been very common among developing nations (the US included). https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-02-18/us-complains-other-nations-are-stealing-us-technology-america-has-history https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-02-18/us-complains-other-na...

paul7986 8y ago
It happens within our (US) borders where those who have tons of money and power yet lack innovation and innovative ideas steal willfully from those who do. Patent or no patent!

Puer 8y ago

Ah yes, more unsubstantiated claims about Chinese tech and culture on HN. Can you back up a single thing you've claimed?

dang 8y ago
Please don't post unsubstantive comments here regardless of how wrong someone is. And especially please don't post in the flamewar style. I realize it's frustrating to encounter these discussions on the internet, but we need you and everyone here to do better than this. If you know more than others, post correct information so that readers can learn something. Even if you don't persuade the person you're arguing with, the fair-minded majority will benefit. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

mikejb 8y ago

> you will find there are lots of Chinese nationalist stories about their hero technician / scientists steal western technologies. They are literally proud of it. Reminds me of the movie "Firefox" [1] with Clint Eastwood. The plot? An all-American hero sneaks deep into the UDSSR to steal a new high-tech aircraft. And I'm pretty sure Hollywood is still pumping out ideological crap like that. [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083943/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083943/

taneq 8y ago
Interesting comparison, given that Firefox was set in the context of the Cold War. The US and China certainly seem to be developing this kind of "frenemy" relationship where they're competitors and at the same time they're commercial partners. How different would the Cold War have been if the U.S.S.R. had done the lion's share of the U.S.'s manufacturing?
- adventured 8y ago
  It's an interesting premise, however it probably would have been impossible. China - which has never come even remotely close to doing the lionshare of US manufacturing [1] - required enormous capital to be invested by US (and European) companies to build up their manufacturing base. That capital needed to exist first before it could be invested into Chinese factories. The US got dramatically richer from 1950 to 1970 (GDP went from $280b to $1t, during the strong gold dollar era), while it dominated global manufacturing. The wealth it built up in those decades of manufacturing hegemony is what in part enabled the US to deploy such immense capital into China in the following decades. The US wouldn't have had the accumulated wealth and consumer base to utilize the USSR as a manufacturing offshore and make the necessary investments, minus the post war domestic manufacturing boom. Unless we're talking about doing that at the very end of the USSR in the late 1980s, after US manufacturing had already peaked and begun to decline. (obviously this is all fantasy, because the USSR's policies would never have allowed for the scenario, but it's an interesting thought experiment regardless) Also, given the USSR's population ratio with China (~260m people in the USSR versus 980m in China circa 1980), it would have been impossible on a more practical basis, for them to output so much. The USSR's economy was never known for having world-class efficiency and scale of output. They never mastered high quality massive scale manufacturing. I'm skeptical the bureaucracy would have ever made it possible. It's likely they couldn't have output but a modest fraction of US manufacturing needs under any scenario. [1] US manufacturing output was about ~$2.1 trillion for 2018. Imports from China for 2018 were something like $560 billion. Approximately a 4x difference.

thetechlead 8y ago

> In China, stealing trade secrets is called “打破技术封锁” (breaking the technical blockade). Wow. This is a blatant lie. Where did you get this piece? The Chinese phrase means developing the technology to a certain level that an embargo no longer works as intended. There are plenty examples in space technologies - US prohibits NASA collaboration with China and there are indigenous innovation breakthrough from within like landing on the far side of the moon.

largehotcoffee 8y ago
>Simply put, Huawei's products have better quality and companies in the US can't compete with it. >I'm now typing on a Huawei Matebook 13 and carrying a Huawei Mate 10 phone. Those things have amazing quality and it's a real pity customers can't have them in the States. You have an interesting post history supporting Huawei for an account only a month old...
- thetechlead 8y ago
  You're welcome to read all my posts and comments, and they are public. I have been reading hacker news for a few years and only recently wanted to sign up. so what's your point?
  - seppin 8y ago
    You are nakedly cheerleading for an authoritarian China and it's creepy and weird.
    - ahoyleo 8y ago
      So it must be shills to be supportive of China? Have you considered supporting China may be quite a popular opinion among the Chinese people both domestically and overseas?
      - mrkstu 8y ago
        Most westerners appreciate a balance between supporting one's country of origin in a generic, thoughtful way, and unthinking jinoism[0]. Part of the mental maturity process is being able to see the greater affects of the policies of one's country on the wider world, and advocating for policies which enhance things for the greater world while still being positive for one's own country. That maturity process is naturally short circuited in authoritarian countries like China. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jingoism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jingoism

hungryhobo 8y ago

I'm sorry but this is bullshit

ezVoodoo 8y ago

As one who speaks Chinese, I find what you said is a blatant lie. In deed, “打破技术封锁” means to break the technical blockade, but by means of independent innovation, not stealing "trade secrets". Given China has the biggest force of engineers and scientists in the world, it is not so hard to understand. Fact check, Huawei is the only full 5G solution provider in the world; whereas no such company can be found in the US. So when you or your friends think the US has much to be stolen by China, think twice.

hurr_durr 8y ago
All this crying about how evil Huawei is is absolutely hysterical. Also interesting that so many westerners with a passing understanding of the Chinese language or have been to China a couple times are suddenly experts.
dc443 8y ago
I don't get it. What you wrote and what you're responding to are not in contradiction with one another. On what basis is what GP said a lie? What relevance does 5G have to anything? Progress in technology is progress regardless. I just watched a few episodes of Black Mirror so I'm in cynical mode. I'm not trying to be argumentative but it just felt more like a non-sequitur than anything... Progress is good (mostly), though, right? As for which economies that progress happens to bolster, well, let the chips fall where they may, I suppose.
- johannkokos 8y ago
  > On what basis is what GP said a lie? stealing trade secrets is called “打破技术封锁”
  - close04 8y ago
    Can you show a few press articles in which that term is glorified as "stealing from the west" as GP mentions? As far as I can tell using translators, the usage is almost exclusively in articles talking about their own research, technical and scientific advancements, etc. Nothing that implies stealing. So is that "translation" actually a translation or just the personal interpretation of GP based on their preferences and understanding? P.S. I'm genuinely curious for those articles, just in case you're interested in supporting the idea that the word actually has a more "creative" translation. Shouldn't be hard to find given that there are "lots of Chinese nationalist stories in Chinese news reports and textbooks".

majia 8y ago

Most Chinese people are not proud of stolen technologies. Recently, a small Chinese internet company, Redcore, marketed a chromium based web browser as a indigenous innovation without acknowledgement. This sparked a public outcry in China and the company was forced to apologize and retract its claims.

EastToWest 8y ago

Equating "stealing trade secrects" with "打破技术封锁" is disingenuous. And this > you will find there are lots of Chinese nationalist stories about their hero technician / scientists steal western technologies. They are literally proud of it is a blatant lie. Sure, if you just want to feel superior, keep making blanket statements like this. But if you really want the West to outcompete China, you'd better spend more time on understanding the intricacies.

websterisk 8y ago

I read an article a while back, probably a couple of years (sorry, I can't find/cite). The observation in the article paints this "theft" in what they perceived to be a cultural distinction... Specifically, in the US (and the west, more broadly) we ascribe a great deal of value to figuring out "what" to do commercially and "how" to do it technically. Most of our energy around IP are wrapped around this value and defending it. The article had observed that for the Chinese, there was no additional value ascribed to the people or groups that paved that path, but rather that there was perceived merit/value in "doing" those things better. To use an example, identifying the market and technology and usage trends to develop a valuable product is no more important or meritorious than merely seeing/understanding that product and fast-following with some other advantage. And further, there is nothing inherently negative about re-creating someone else's work for personal benefit, after all, you still need to do the work of "doing" it. One of the conclusions drawn was that this lack of value around creativity and direct inventorship makes the Chinese a super formidable second place in many arenas but without the skills or cultural DNA to actually take the lead or be the expeditionary force... There are pros and cons to all of that (and some pretty rebuttable presumptions in the analysis) but I thought it was an interesting take that (if valid) sheds light on what we have seen, are seeing, and will continue to see.

TStowe 8y ago
People also make parallels to government secrets, when every government does the same.
sangnoir 8y ago
> One of the conclusions drawn was that this lack of value around creativity and direct inventorship makes the Chinese a super formidable second place in many arenas but without the skills or cultural DNA to actually take the lead or be the expeditionary force That's a bit much, don't you think? Pick any engineering discipline, then randomly pick any top US university and then count the number of post-grad researchers who happen to be of Chinese heritage, or people who were raised with, as you put it: this "cultural DNA". I've always wondered how Detroit failed to see Japanese competition coming, but I now have a front-row seat to watch this Chinese STEM "misunderestimation" unfold.

TStowe 8y ago

On the flip side, though not often corporately, the US does the same, as do most countries. I love how China gets pointed fingers at constantly for espionage and the like when the rest of the world does the same damn thing. The main difference is govenment-backing of corporations, and the blatant corporate abuse of such things. China for Chinese, and similar nationalistic views aren't exactly shocking given the behavior of our nation, and others toward the Chinese, especially under our current administration. The nationalism and racism is on both sides. And given the scale of China, well, do the math. Beyond this, the level of information published on the Chinese web is amazing -- I did product research for a Fortune company in the US and the Chinese research published freely put them ahead. 10x the startups. 10x the millionaires made. Every. Year. Everyone else is tiny and stagnant by comparison.

kuuspa 8y ago

And "on the horse" means "right away". Doesn't mean you literally should get on a horse and get over here.