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Most financial powers when rising up have stolen technology. This is very much not unique to US-China. Maybe reading up on the history of America brazenly steal

Most financial powers when rising up have stolen technology. This is very much not unique to US-China. Maybe reading up on the history of America brazenly stealing from other countries could provide some contrast here. https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/12/06/we-were-pirates-too/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/12/06/we-were-pirates-too/

NeedMoreTea 7y ago
The British were at it before the US, post-war Japan was at it. The US was built on it. The first few incarnations of US patent law only allowed US citizens to hold a patent - so foreign inventors and corporations could not protect their inventions in the US. It's such a common phase of growth that it is surprising people are surprised at China following along.
- jsty 7y ago
  I'd say most people were probably more hopeful that the world had moved past that modus operandi for bootstrapping growth. There are many things that might have been considered par for the course decades ago that we think of as beyond the pale today.
- deogeo 7y ago
  I'm not surprised or even judgemental about it - given a choice between respecting foreign-imposed IP law and the prosperity of your own people, who wouldn't choose the latter? Especially after such wonderful things as the opium wars. What I am surprised by is how long the US ignored the threat of moving production and knowledge to China, under the dogma of free trade.
  - TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
    When you have a culture where short-term returns trump long-term strategy - never mind political wisdom - it's absolutely predictable that you're going to be blindsided by the realisation that other countries can out-compete with you, and don't just exist to be used and discarded.
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    Neither am I. What does surprise me is that nations and industries keep doing it expecting "this time is different". Despite the regularity across history of first supplying the tools and training - whether shipbuilding, looms, steel making or iPhone assembly and chip fab, then claim they'll never be able to design as well, and can only copy. Sometime later another industry sails inevitably off to some far flung region. Since free trade almost nothing is considered strategic like the Chinese and others once thought tea, rubber, spices or early inventions that were guarded most carefully. Neither seems quite the right balance. :) > opium wars Palmerston's opium war, kicked off by an out-of-control East India Company giving themselves an opium monopoly, and the Tory party loosely falling into step. One of the two wars had parliament winning a vote against the government for entering an illegal war. Difficult to understand the thinking of the era yet at the same time feels strangely familiar. Course the French, US and others joined in, and the US was marketing cheaper Turkish opium. Roosevelt or Hoover had an opium smuggling ancestor, I forget which of the two.
    - turtlecloud 7y ago
      I was surprised to read that some WASPs are distantly related to 19th vent opium smuggling. For example the Forbes family made their fortune in opium and now they have a business magazine
- jgamman 7y ago
  slightly off topic but IIRC the only time Adam Smith mentioned 'an invisible hand' in his Wealth of Nations book was to explain why English companies _wouldn't_ do this. Nothing to do with a market reaching equilibrium etc. It was very much a cultural assumption that doing something like that 'just wasn't cricket' and no true Englishman would offshore their company!... wiki: The only use of "invisible hand" found in The Wealth of Nations is in Book IV, Chapter II, "Of Restraints upon the Importation from foreign Countries of such Goods as can be produced at Home."

NeedMoreTea 7y ago

The British were at it before the US, post-war Japan was at it. The US was built on it. The first few incarnations of US patent law only allowed US citizens to hold a patent - so foreign inventors and corporations could not protect their inventions in the US. It's such a common phase of growth that it is surprising people are surprised at China following along.

jsty 7y ago
I'd say most people were probably more hopeful that the world had moved past that modus operandi for bootstrapping growth. There are many things that might have been considered par for the course decades ago that we think of as beyond the pale today.
deogeo 7y ago
I'm not surprised or even judgemental about it - given a choice between respecting foreign-imposed IP law and the prosperity of your own people, who wouldn't choose the latter? Especially after such wonderful things as the opium wars. What I am surprised by is how long the US ignored the threat of moving production and knowledge to China, under the dogma of free trade.
- TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
  When you have a culture where short-term returns trump long-term strategy - never mind political wisdom - it's absolutely predictable that you're going to be blindsided by the realisation that other countries can out-compete with you, and don't just exist to be used and discarded.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Neither am I. What does surprise me is that nations and industries keep doing it expecting "this time is different". Despite the regularity across history of first supplying the tools and training - whether shipbuilding, looms, steel making or iPhone assembly and chip fab, then claim they'll never be able to design as well, and can only copy. Sometime later another industry sails inevitably off to some far flung region. Since free trade almost nothing is considered strategic like the Chinese and others once thought tea, rubber, spices or early inventions that were guarded most carefully. Neither seems quite the right balance. :) > opium wars Palmerston's opium war, kicked off by an out-of-control East India Company giving themselves an opium monopoly, and the Tory party loosely falling into step. One of the two wars had parliament winning a vote against the government for entering an illegal war. Difficult to understand the thinking of the era yet at the same time feels strangely familiar. Course the French, US and others joined in, and the US was marketing cheaper Turkish opium. Roosevelt or Hoover had an opium smuggling ancestor, I forget which of the two.
  - turtlecloud 7y ago
    I was surprised to read that some WASPs are distantly related to 19th vent opium smuggling. For example the Forbes family made their fortune in opium and now they have a business magazine
jgamman 7y ago
slightly off topic but IIRC the only time Adam Smith mentioned 'an invisible hand' in his Wealth of Nations book was to explain why English companies _wouldn't_ do this. Nothing to do with a market reaching equilibrium etc. It was very much a cultural assumption that doing something like that 'just wasn't cricket' and no true Englishman would offshore their company!... wiki: The only use of "invisible hand" found in The Wealth of Nations is in Book IV, Chapter II, "Of Restraints upon the Importation from foreign Countries of such Goods as can be produced at Home."