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Isn't the ball in China's court here? I am not sure what is the expectation of US in this. China has a completely closed market while at the same time they are

Isn't the ball in China's court here? I am not sure what is the expectation of US in this. China has a completely closed market while at the same time they are reaping the benefits of selling in markets of other countries with no penalties. How is that fair? Also, they force companies to share their technologies/IP if they are interested in coming into Chinese markets - and then they just steal it to undercut the foreign companies. This honestly needs to change. When China was smaller, these tactics were ok - but to expect the world will close their eyes on their practices at the current scale is fooling oneself.

londons_explore 7y ago
They aren't stopping other countries doing the same. The world might be a better place if everyone stole and remixed IP
- Teever 7y ago
  They aren't stopping other countries from doing the same yet. And the reason for that is that they are still the underdog so it makes sense to turn a blind eye to their domestic industries violating American IP laws. Just like it makes sense for the US to enact and attempt to enforce restrictive IP laws on a global scale. Make no mistake once China ascends they will enforce their will on the world just like the US has done and it will be ugly. Say goodbye to democracy. Say goodbye to due process. Say hello to coercive IP law. Say hello to unimaginably restrictive DRM and surveillance.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - infinity0 7y ago
    This is the type of comment that really indicates an immensely ignorant oversimplified misunderstanding of the complexity of the Chinese political situation. China has overthrown harsh rulers many more times than the US has, even taking into account the latter's short and young history. The last time was in 1912, and very plausibly arguably 1949 too. (The Nationalists were pretty bad, objectively speaking.)
    - PavlovsCat 7y ago
      I wanted to reply, it said comment deleted, I reload the page, there it is again, 0 minutes ago. Nice one deleting your comment because it garnered downvotes, just to post the exact same comment again. "the complexity of the Chinese political situation" = "China has overthrown harsh rulers many more times than the US has" is itself a simplification. https://vimeo.com/44078865 https://vimeo.com/44078865 So is this video, it's also a simplification, but more importantly, it's one of several lines in the sand: China aside, I don't want that where I live. Period. Western companies have already started to censor themselves to not offend China, and this must stop.
      - infinity0 7y ago
        Yup, I'm not about to be censored by people downvoting my comments without explanation. I think the downvoting mechanic on HN is stupid. Of course what I said is an oversimplification. It's meant to directly make you question your deep underlying assumptions, and your own oversimplifications. The government has a lot of power on paper both now and historically. Yet despite this, rebellions have still occurred regularly, and this core central power did not historically cause China to go and colonise other countries committing atrocities there. Perhaps something is missing from your own US-centric legalist analysis?
        PavlovsCat 7y ago
        Fair enough, FWIW I didn't even downvote you, I also prefer discussion. > It's meant to directly make you question your deep underlying assumptions "Deep underlying" being code for being made up by you on the spot? > The government has a lot of power on paper both now and historically. Yet despite this, rebellions have still occurred regularly The last time 1949? So, not since modern, industrialized totalitarianism took hold. That's like talking about cancer by describing the life of a person before contracting cancer. > this core central power did not historically cause China to go and colonise other countries committing atrocities there They already are causing Western media to censor themselves even on sites blocked in China. Mercedes Benz apologized three times for even quoting the Dalai Lama, just an inspirational quote. For me, that's three times too many. And just like I'm not over the Iraq war being a war of aggression, I will not forget or forgive this, either. You do you. > your own US-centric legalist analysis? Again you assumptions about my assumptions. If anything, being German, my "analysis" (of which you quote nothing, don't engage with at all) is Nazi-based.
  - jazzyjackson 7y ago
    America is the first mover on DRM, and there is no American company that will let me pay for a movie and download an MP4 -- I have to be logged in and stream it (some services let you download it but then disable playing after 48 hours) Is there a similar situation in China? My sense was that the culture was much less restrictive -- all is fair, it's not worth the time and money to sue someone else into oblivion.
- blago 7y ago
  > The world might be a better place if everyone stole and remixed IP Until it becomes unprofitable to invest in innovation
  - nosianu 7y ago
    You may be mistaken about the source of a lot of "deep innovation". I know I was, when I was younger. Here is a nice example that helped shatter some of the myths I myself believed, in this case it was that Silicon Valley was the product of free enterprise: https://youtu.be/ZTC_RxWN_xo https://youtu.be/ZTC_RxWN_xo (Secret History of Silicon Valley - Computer History Museum, Mountain View) In reality capitalism only took over after massive (debt based!) spending by (US) government during WWII. The risky stuff doesn't happen in companies. Even things like e-cars and rockets, see Elon Musk and his companies as the most prominent examples, didn't invent any of the basics. They just take well-established concepts. It's not either or, it's specialization: The low-probability-of-success stuff for larger society (government mostly, at this point), and when there is something to build on the more focused business people and entrepreneurs who want to see an ROI are better at executing from there on. But, back to the comment you replied to, basic research, the risky stuff, is better off being open and available.
    - blago 7y ago
      Define "deep innovation". Are you saying that private enterprise is only capable of "shallow innovation"? If so, do you think that the world will do just fine if we removed large financial rewards for "shallow innovation" like the smartphone, new drugs, medical devices, software, etc?
  - jazzyjackson 7y ago
    innovation comes from graduate students everyone building out a new technology borrowed ideas freely without compensating the real innovators (of course, implementation can be the more difficult piece) As long as governments subsidize public universities and research departments, there will exist a font of innovation
    - 7y ago
PunchTornado 7y ago
how is china a closed market? germany sells plenty of cars there...
- Tepix 7y ago
  They force foreign manufacturers to create local businesses with 50% chinese share.
  - dx034 7y ago
    A necessary strategy for any developing nation. If you allow imports with no local manufacturing requirement, other nations have incentives to dump products onto your markets to increase production. Open trade only really works if both sides can see eye to eye. Otherwise the developing nation will be stuck producing cheap products with little to no added value.
    - barry-cotter 7y ago
      Hong Kong had unilateral free trade throughout decades of almost uninterrupted economic growth. If you produce cheap products you develop expertise that you can leverage to eventually produce more expensive ones. This process of learning by doing does not depend on tariff barriers and tariff barriers will not make it work either. Argentina produced cars domestically for decades that were more expensive and higher price than the world market and as soon as tariff protection was withdrawn the industry disappeared, after having wasted millions of dollars over decades.
  - mgoetzke 7y ago
    until Tesla came :)
  - ptah 7y ago
    this is a good way to avoid getting colonized by american companies
  - ionised 7y ago
    That's just common sense for a developing economy.
coldtea 7y ago
>Also, they force companies to share their technologies/IP if they are interested in coming into Chinese markets - and then they just steal it to undercut the foreign companies. That's a great way to copyright reform right there!
NotPaidToPost 7y ago
China has done what every developing country should do (Edit: and what the likes of Japan and Korea did before them) If you open your economy when you are relatively undeveloped and weak then foreign companies will immediately occupy your economy and you can forget about creating national 'champions'. China is not a closed market but they are careful not to fall into that trap.
- radmuzom 7y ago
  Agreed. A good book on this subject is "How Asia Works" by Joe Studwell.
- ngokevin 7y ago
  Yup, they've set it up so money can flow within their own system and their own economy can prosper, rather than money feeding out to Google or Facebook. Quality of life in China has exploded massively, and things like restaurant prices are reaching American prices, which is insane going back ten years. And they remix the ideas of western tech and often improve upon it. WeChat is orders of magnitude more convenient than what the US has to offer. Everything is centralized and integrated, what Google tries to do, but adopted everywhere. Book anything, pay for anything, tap phone to pay for anything. I don't expect many places to take phone payments. In China, most everywhere can take phone payments. Their social networks also seem to do great at getting things naturally viral. I posted a random video without any boosting and it got like 1.5K views in a day.
  - teknologist 7y ago
    I would just like to say that contactless chip cards are ubiquitous, do not require a battery, are more secure (no reliance on QR codes) and have been around for years in the West.
    - njepa 7y ago
      It isn't the same thing by any means, and doesn't really offer much over cards other than a slight improvement in convenience. Mobile payments in China are essentially peer-to-peer and universal. The closest equivalent is probably something like MobilePay or Swish, but that isn't as good or as widespread.
baybal2 7y ago
> I am not sure what is the expectation of US in this. China has a completely closed market That's a big big stretch. It's more open than a big part of Western countries. 1. There is a blanket ban on anything media related 2. Select heavy industries 3. Defence 4. Agriculture *production* That's not much different from US and other countries around. Most Western countries with socialist streak restrict way more than that.
dalbasal 7y ago
I agree on the market access point, to an extent. There an assymetry that can't stand forever, given the size of China's economy today. But, free trade has never really been free. There are tons and tons of caveats, exceptions, special rules and bad faith. So, I think it's misleading to represent china as "closed" and other countries as "open." On the second point, I disagree. IP is not some basic, natural law. It's a relatively recent invention, ostensibly invented to promote certain economic incentives. Why is china morally obligated to respect it? At any given point in time, the biggest effect of an IP system is how it affects the current portfolio of patents & copyrights. That's what tends to dictate the rules. When copyright law is updated, it's the impact on Disney's IP asset portfolio that's considered... not future works that will be created. It's a similar dynamic for patents. Why should china (or any country) have to subscribe to an IP system under which they don't own as many patents. Meanwhile, the benefits of a patent system are contraversial, even dubious (imho). Lots of intelligent peoe think they do more harm than good. The billions spent by tech companies on patent lawyers are a case-in-poiny. I do not think we (globally) are best served by a global IP monolith. This is one area where we can benefit from a diversity of rules.
- dkbrk 7y ago
  > IP is not some basic, natural law. It's a relatively recent invention, ostensibly invented to promote certain economic incentives. Why is china morally obligated to respect it? > At any given point in time, the biggest effect of an IP system is how it affects the current portfolio of patents & copyrights. That's what tends to dictate the rules. When copyright law is updated, it's the impact on Disney's IP asset portfolio that's considered... not future works that will be created. It's a similar dynamic for patents. > Why should china (or any country) have to subscribe to an IP system under which they don't own as many patents. To an extent I agree with you. There are a great many problems with the current state of "Intellectual Property" law and I there's some merit to the argument that it would benefit humanity as a whole if it were scaled back drastically or even eliminated entirely. However, China not only does not enforce US patents and copyrights but also engages in extensive industrial espionage to steal trade secrets. Even if we did not have copyright and patent law, such actions would and should still be illegal. Qualitatively, I think there's a big difference between reverse-engineering and making your own version of some company's product, and hacking into their servers and stealing the data to make it or paying an employee of theirs to exfiltrate the source artifacts for you. Chinese companies do both. The former is sometimes permissible, at other times may violate patent or copyright law, which may or may not be seen as a bad thing depending on your views of the matter. But the latter should be rightfully condemned. There's also the argument that even if patents are granted too freely and abused, and copyright extended far too long, that if China wants to engage in the world economy then they need to play by the same rules as everyone else, and that if they do not play by those rules then other countries are entirely justified in retaliating.
jimmydef 7y ago
>Also, they force companies to share their technologies/IP if they are interested in coming into Chinese markets - and then they just steal it to undercut the foreign companies. If the companies are willingly going to the Chinese markets on their own accord under an IP sharing agreement, you can no longer use the term "force". They have a choice to not share it by not entering the market. You can critique this as an inherent weakness of capitalism, but China is not forcing anybody in this situation. And why would they have to steal it if its already shared? This doesn't even make any sense.

londons_explore 7y ago

They aren't stopping other countries doing the same. The world might be a better place if everyone stole and remixed IP

Teever 7y ago
They aren't stopping other countries from doing the same yet. And the reason for that is that they are still the underdog so it makes sense to turn a blind eye to their domestic industries violating American IP laws. Just like it makes sense for the US to enact and attempt to enforce restrictive IP laws on a global scale. Make no mistake once China ascends they will enforce their will on the world just like the US has done and it will be ugly. Say goodbye to democracy. Say goodbye to due process. Say hello to coercive IP law. Say hello to unimaginably restrictive DRM and surveillance.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- infinity0 7y ago
  This is the type of comment that really indicates an immensely ignorant oversimplified misunderstanding of the complexity of the Chinese political situation. China has overthrown harsh rulers many more times than the US has, even taking into account the latter's short and young history. The last time was in 1912, and very plausibly arguably 1949 too. (The Nationalists were pretty bad, objectively speaking.)
  - PavlovsCat 7y ago
    I wanted to reply, it said comment deleted, I reload the page, there it is again, 0 minutes ago. Nice one deleting your comment because it garnered downvotes, just to post the exact same comment again. "the complexity of the Chinese political situation" = "China has overthrown harsh rulers many more times than the US has" is itself a simplification. https://vimeo.com/44078865 https://vimeo.com/44078865 So is this video, it's also a simplification, but more importantly, it's one of several lines in the sand: China aside, I don't want that where I live. Period. Western companies have already started to censor themselves to not offend China, and this must stop.
    - infinity0 7y ago
      Yup, I'm not about to be censored by people downvoting my comments without explanation. I think the downvoting mechanic on HN is stupid. Of course what I said is an oversimplification. It's meant to directly make you question your deep underlying assumptions, and your own oversimplifications. The government has a lot of power on paper both now and historically. Yet despite this, rebellions have still occurred regularly, and this core central power did not historically cause China to go and colonise other countries committing atrocities there. Perhaps something is missing from your own US-centric legalist analysis?
      - PavlovsCat 7y ago
        Fair enough, FWIW I didn't even downvote you, I also prefer discussion. > It's meant to directly make you question your deep underlying assumptions "Deep underlying" being code for being made up by you on the spot? > The government has a lot of power on paper both now and historically. Yet despite this, rebellions have still occurred regularly The last time 1949? So, not since modern, industrialized totalitarianism took hold. That's like talking about cancer by describing the life of a person before contracting cancer. > this core central power did not historically cause China to go and colonise other countries committing atrocities there They already are causing Western media to censor themselves even on sites blocked in China. Mercedes Benz apologized three times for even quoting the Dalai Lama, just an inspirational quote. For me, that's three times too many. And just like I'm not over the Iraq war being a war of aggression, I will not forget or forgive this, either. You do you. > your own US-centric legalist analysis? Again you assumptions about my assumptions. If anything, being German, my "analysis" (of which you quote nothing, don't engage with at all) is Nazi-based.
- jazzyjackson 7y ago
  America is the first mover on DRM, and there is no American company that will let me pay for a movie and download an MP4 -- I have to be logged in and stream it (some services let you download it but then disable playing after 48 hours) Is there a similar situation in China? My sense was that the culture was much less restrictive -- all is fair, it's not worth the time and money to sue someone else into oblivion.
blago 7y ago
> The world might be a better place if everyone stole and remixed IP Until it becomes unprofitable to invest in innovation
- nosianu 7y ago
  You may be mistaken about the source of a lot of "deep innovation". I know I was, when I was younger. Here is a nice example that helped shatter some of the myths I myself believed, in this case it was that Silicon Valley was the product of free enterprise: https://youtu.be/ZTC_RxWN_xo https://youtu.be/ZTC_RxWN_xo (Secret History of Silicon Valley - Computer History Museum, Mountain View) In reality capitalism only took over after massive (debt based!) spending by (US) government during WWII. The risky stuff doesn't happen in companies. Even things like e-cars and rockets, see Elon Musk and his companies as the most prominent examples, didn't invent any of the basics. They just take well-established concepts. It's not either or, it's specialization: The low-probability-of-success stuff for larger society (government mostly, at this point), and when there is something to build on the more focused business people and entrepreneurs who want to see an ROI are better at executing from there on. But, back to the comment you replied to, basic research, the risky stuff, is better off being open and available.
  - blago 7y ago
    Define "deep innovation". Are you saying that private enterprise is only capable of "shallow innovation"? If so, do you think that the world will do just fine if we removed large financial rewards for "shallow innovation" like the smartphone, new drugs, medical devices, software, etc?
- jazzyjackson 7y ago
  innovation comes from graduate students everyone building out a new technology borrowed ideas freely without compensating the real innovators (of course, implementation can be the more difficult piece) As long as governments subsidize public universities and research departments, there will exist a font of innovation
  - 7y ago

PunchTornado 7y ago

how is china a closed market? germany sells plenty of cars there...

Tepix 7y ago
They force foreign manufacturers to create local businesses with 50% chinese share.
- dx034 7y ago
  A necessary strategy for any developing nation. If you allow imports with no local manufacturing requirement, other nations have incentives to dump products onto your markets to increase production. Open trade only really works if both sides can see eye to eye. Otherwise the developing nation will be stuck producing cheap products with little to no added value.
  - barry-cotter 7y ago
    Hong Kong had unilateral free trade throughout decades of almost uninterrupted economic growth. If you produce cheap products you develop expertise that you can leverage to eventually produce more expensive ones. This process of learning by doing does not depend on tariff barriers and tariff barriers will not make it work either. Argentina produced cars domestically for decades that were more expensive and higher price than the world market and as soon as tariff protection was withdrawn the industry disappeared, after having wasted millions of dollars over decades.
- mgoetzke 7y ago
  until Tesla came :)
- ptah 7y ago
  this is a good way to avoid getting colonized by american companies
- ionised 7y ago
  That's just common sense for a developing economy.

coldtea 7y ago

>Also, they force companies to share their technologies/IP if they are interested in coming into Chinese markets - and then they just steal it to undercut the foreign companies. That's a great way to copyright reform right there!

NotPaidToPost 7y ago

China has done what every developing country should do (Edit: and what the likes of Japan and Korea did before them) If you open your economy when you are relatively undeveloped and weak then foreign companies will immediately occupy your economy and you can forget about creating national 'champions'. China is not a closed market but they are careful not to fall into that trap.

radmuzom 7y ago
Agreed. A good book on this subject is "How Asia Works" by Joe Studwell.
ngokevin 7y ago
Yup, they've set it up so money can flow within their own system and their own economy can prosper, rather than money feeding out to Google or Facebook. Quality of life in China has exploded massively, and things like restaurant prices are reaching American prices, which is insane going back ten years. And they remix the ideas of western tech and often improve upon it. WeChat is orders of magnitude more convenient than what the US has to offer. Everything is centralized and integrated, what Google tries to do, but adopted everywhere. Book anything, pay for anything, tap phone to pay for anything. I don't expect many places to take phone payments. In China, most everywhere can take phone payments. Their social networks also seem to do great at getting things naturally viral. I posted a random video without any boosting and it got like 1.5K views in a day.
- teknologist 7y ago
  I would just like to say that contactless chip cards are ubiquitous, do not require a battery, are more secure (no reliance on QR codes) and have been around for years in the West.
  - njepa 7y ago
    It isn't the same thing by any means, and doesn't really offer much over cards other than a slight improvement in convenience. Mobile payments in China are essentially peer-to-peer and universal. The closest equivalent is probably something like MobilePay or Swish, but that isn't as good or as widespread.

baybal2 7y ago

> I am not sure what is the expectation of US in this. China has a completely closed market That's a big big stretch. It's more open than a big part of Western countries. 1. There is a blanket ban on anything media related 2. Select heavy industries 3. Defence 4. Agriculture *production* That's not much different from US and other countries around. Most Western countries with socialist streak restrict way more than that.

dalbasal 7y ago

I agree on the market access point, to an extent. There an assymetry that can't stand forever, given the size of China's economy today. But, free trade has never really been free. There are tons and tons of caveats, exceptions, special rules and bad faith. So, I think it's misleading to represent china as "closed" and other countries as "open." On the second point, I disagree. IP is not some basic, natural law. It's a relatively recent invention, ostensibly invented to promote certain economic incentives. Why is china morally obligated to respect it? At any given point in time, the biggest effect of an IP system is how it affects the current portfolio of patents & copyrights. That's what tends to dictate the rules. When copyright law is updated, it's the impact on Disney's IP asset portfolio that's considered... not future works that will be created. It's a similar dynamic for patents. Why should china (or any country) have to subscribe to an IP system under which they don't own as many patents. Meanwhile, the benefits of a patent system are contraversial, even dubious (imho). Lots of intelligent peoe think they do more harm than good. The billions spent by tech companies on patent lawyers are a case-in-poiny. I do not think we (globally) are best served by a global IP monolith. This is one area where we can benefit from a diversity of rules.

dkbrk 7y ago
> IP is not some basic, natural law. It's a relatively recent invention, ostensibly invented to promote certain economic incentives. Why is china morally obligated to respect it? > At any given point in time, the biggest effect of an IP system is how it affects the current portfolio of patents & copyrights. That's what tends to dictate the rules. When copyright law is updated, it's the impact on Disney's IP asset portfolio that's considered... not future works that will be created. It's a similar dynamic for patents. > Why should china (or any country) have to subscribe to an IP system under which they don't own as many patents. To an extent I agree with you. There are a great many problems with the current state of "Intellectual Property" law and I there's some merit to the argument that it would benefit humanity as a whole if it were scaled back drastically or even eliminated entirely. However, China not only does not enforce US patents and copyrights but also engages in extensive industrial espionage to steal trade secrets. Even if we did not have copyright and patent law, such actions would and should still be illegal. Qualitatively, I think there's a big difference between reverse-engineering and making your own version of some company's product, and hacking into their servers and stealing the data to make it or paying an employee of theirs to exfiltrate the source artifacts for you. Chinese companies do both. The former is sometimes permissible, at other times may violate patent or copyright law, which may or may not be seen as a bad thing depending on your views of the matter. But the latter should be rightfully condemned. There's also the argument that even if patents are granted too freely and abused, and copyright extended far too long, that if China wants to engage in the world economy then they need to play by the same rules as everyone else, and that if they do not play by those rules then other countries are entirely justified in retaliating.

jimmydef 7y ago

>Also, they force companies to share their technologies/IP if they are interested in coming into Chinese markets - and then they just steal it to undercut the foreign companies. If the companies are willingly going to the Chinese markets on their own accord under an IP sharing agreement, you can no longer use the term "force". They have a choice to not share it by not entering the market. You can critique this as an inherent weakness of capitalism, but China is not forcing anybody in this situation. And why would they have to steal it if its already shared? This doesn't even make any sense.