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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 o
by 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 agoOkay, 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 agoDo 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 agoNot 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.