6 ms·

> It's hard to feel too sorry for these companies. It's not exactly a secret that this is how China operates You mean every developing nation? Just look at U.S

> It's hard to feel too sorry for these companies. It's not exactly a secret that this is how China operates You mean every developing nation? Just look at U.S. industrial espionage in Europe during the 18th-19th century when it was developing. Pretending this is somehow how China specifically operates is disingenuous.

crispinb 7y ago
Pretending this is somehow how China specifically operates is disingenuous All the vast majority of people in the "West" know about China is whatever happens to be propagated by mainstream propagandists for current purposes. Ignorance is much more common (and hence likely) than disingenuity.
johnchristopher 7y ago
We left the 18th and 19th century a long time ago. It's not disingenuous to single out China for this behavior since China is one of the biggest player doing it and reaping so much from it in our time. Plus, whataboutism.
- sangnoir 7y ago
  > We left the 18th and 19th century a long time ago. So? It's not like the US didn't know that it was breaking British laws back then. IP protectionism is nothing new, it is is fair to make comparisons to 18th/19th century events.
  - pinkfoot 7y ago
    > it is is fair to make comparisons to 18th/19th century events? Yes
  - johnchristopher 7y ago
    It all depends of what you make of that comparison. Are you saying it's okay because others did it before ? That it shouldn't be debated ? What's the position ? What is the point of preventing people from saying China is playing the IP theft game hard at the moment ?
    - sangnoir 7y ago
      > Are you saying it's okay because others did it before ? Yes and no - it depends entirely on whose perspective you are arguing from (upstart vs. establishment), and even that changes over time. For the US, it used to be okay, but no longer is. Also it's not "others" who did it before, but the very same nation-state that is now screaming blue murder. > That it shouldn't be debated ? Oh, it should absolutely be debated, but the US has no moral high ground when making its arguments. Turnabout is fair play
      - johnchristopher 7y ago
        > Also it's not "others" who did it before, but the very same nation-state that is now screaming blue murder. Well, this is the classic continuity problem: is the US from centuries ago the same US of today ? > Oh, it should absolutely be debated, but the US has no moral high ground when making its arguments. Turnabout is fair play I am from Europe. Anyway, I disagree. Moral stances aren't cancelled because past wrongdoings.
virtue3 7y ago
No no no, those are American HEROES sir. https://www.history.com/news/industrial-revolution-spies-europe https://www.history.com/news/industrial-revolution-spies-eur... /s But very good point. I feel like military tech is another issue entirely tho. And concerns me with what I'm perceiving as an arms race with carriers and fighter jets over I presume China's ability to project power within their naval territory .
- tatrajim 7y ago
  Note how all comments citing US industrial espionage fail to mention that the young U.S. was at war with Great Britain from 1776-83 and again in 1812 when the Brits burned much of Washington, D.C. is the contemporary parallel that China is now asserting they are at war with the U.S. and therefore can appropriate technology at will?
  - sand_castles 7y ago
    Same thing can be said about the US trying to overthrow the CCP during Mao when they banned food export during their great famine to try and trigger a revolution to remove them from power. Invaded Chinese sovereign territory during the Korean war and got beat back into the current border of South Korea. Supported a western friendly government during WW2 to take over China. In International relations there are no rules.
    - adventured 7y ago
      > Same thing can be said about the US trying to overthrow the CCP during Mao when they banned food export Did you mean when the US saved China from being obliterated by nuclear weapons by the USSR in 1969? Or when the US saved China from continued genocide by the Empire of Japan by almost single-handedly defeating the Japanese military in the Pacific? Maybe you mean when the US funded the build-out of modern China through trade & commerce and not only allowed them into the WTO, but openly invited them in (we got rewarded nicely for that). > Invaded Chinese sovereign territory during the Korean war and got beat back into the current border of South Korea. When the US tried to save the people of North Korea - the Korean War was a UN military mission - from half a century of extreme poverty, genocide and misery that continues to this day (and with zero human rights). With China on the opposite side of that equation, supporting the outcome of genocide, dictatorship, zero human rights, extreme poverty. Meanwhile South Korea became an affluent, liberal democracy. > Supported a western friendly government during WW2 to take over China. When the US tried to spare China half a century of extreme poverty, genocide and misery. China could have developed much faster and with human rights, as with South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan - and without the slaughter of tens of millions of people.
Covzire 7y ago
No nation on earth has benefited more and stolen more from the west than China. Calling them a developing nation when most of the world's high technology is built there is a little disingenuous too.
K0SM0S 7y ago
I attended a top 5 business school in France at the turn of the century. We had partnerships with similar schools in NYC, Tokyo, Sydney, you name it. It was taught in first year of international business classes that outsourcing abroad was functionally equivalent to a transfer of technology — so you always had to factor in the time it took for your magic low-cost solution to fade out and become your competitor, essentially, but not just them: by then the whole market has access to that cost structure, so you have to keep finding new lower-cost solutions, and keep innovating on your technological part (HQ in Europe, USA, Japan, etc). It's just international business 101, really, and has been for at least 20 years in my personal experience — but I'm pretty sure I read articles from the 1970s describing this process, because Japan was the first one to pull it off brilliantly. People focus on China because somebody is waiving that name a lot and his voice carries a lot through the media; but this is definitely just how the world works, and has been forever — if you ask workers from the next village to come and help build stuff with your super tech, it won't take long before they replicate the process over there. And that's called culture, knowledge, it lives and grows and moves like populations of viruses or molecules, it's been modeled for some time in anthropology at that macro-level.
- jariel 7y ago
  This is a misleading narrative in the context of the charges against Huawei. To somehow equate the direct theft of IP and innovation as just 'shared culture and knowledge' completely avoids the material criminality at hand. Huawei is charged with literally incentivizing their employees to steal knowledge and IP, and of directly copying designs, on a systematic and widespread scale. These activities are instituted far beyond just Huawei. This is not a situation of the natural flow of industrial knowledge, it's direct theft.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - sneak 7y ago
    The concept of IP is a relatively recent invention, created by legislatures to prop up specific industries hurt by copying of data, and, as is being demonstrated, not everyone agrees that it should be treated the same as existing systems of physical property. You wouldn’t download a car. But I would. I don’t think it’s possible to steal information.
chrisjc 7y ago
So you're saying that we shouldn't feel sorry for these 20th/21st century companies because of what happened in the 18th and 19th centuries? The whataboutisms are nauseating. > Pretending this is somehow how China specifically operates is disingenuous. No one is pretending this is how China specifically operates. This IS how certain entities from China operate. Especially certain SOE that have the backing of the CCP.
- chillacy 7y ago
  I’m not sure the whataboutism comparison helps if it’s still unclear if any superpower has been able to attain economic dominance without committing some IP theft. Japan, the UK, America, Germany, etc. If there ever was a country which played fair, they didn’t make it very far.
gootdude 7y ago
Any particular books you’d recommend?
shadofx 7y ago
Nobody claimed that China is the only one to steal. Brits stole tea trees from China. Americans stole textile manufacturing from Brits. Perhaps if those Yankees could have pointed at the Brits stealing tea trees, then the Brits would have been struck with a sense of self-realization of their own hypocrisy, and let the Yanks make off with those machine designs with no hassle?
kragen 7y ago
It's really uncalled for to accuse them of being disingenuous. Please assume good faith. They might just be ignorant.
throw0101a 7y ago
> Just look at U.S. industrial espionage in Europe during the 18th-19th century when it was developing. You are answering criticism with criticism: * https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/tu-quoque https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/tu-quoque * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque
jvanderbot 7y ago
What is with this argument that US did it 150 years ago (or X years), so it must be OK for China to do it? Is that how it works at work? Where one person steals your credit and therefore you feel it is OK to forever steal their credit? Is it what you would teach your children or how you would expect the criminal justice system to work? (Oh, everyone seems to break the law, so we'll just ignore laws in your case).
- chillacy 7y ago
  Hmm no but if everyone in MLB did steroids to get to where they are then I’m not going to be that surprised when I find out the rookie is juicing.
  - jvanderbot 7y ago
    You wont be surprised, but you'll punish the rookie or anyone else who fails a drug test just the same. Im not surprised corps and countries steal from eachother, but I expect them to be punished when caught.
    - chillacy 7y ago
      Oh totally I am of the opinion that the US needs to step up its IP protection. It only makes strategic sense to protect your competitive advantage. I'm just pointing out that every other nation seems to have gone through a phase of "cheating" to get to where they are, to the point where I can't even say with 100% certainty that it's possible to become a technological superpower without doing it.
jariel 7y ago
"Pretending this is somehow how China specifically operates is disingenuous." Once again the Chinese 'moral relativism' argument I think falls flat. "Hey look, 500 years ago someone did something, so hey, it's ok" What is 'disingenuous' is this kind of rhetoric that completely denies the material issues at hand. China (and not just Huawei) has been systematically stealing and cheating far beyond anyone else (by the way, probably anyone else in history not that it matters), and this is really just the tip of the iceberg. These charges are well warranted, and they should be applied to any number of entities who've encroached on general principles of trade. If China wants to play with such shenanigans, it's fine actually, it's their choice to use this strategy, but the response should be pretty forceful as well.

crispinb 7y ago

Pretending this is somehow how China specifically operates is disingenuous All the vast majority of people in the "West" know about China is whatever happens to be propagated by mainstream propagandists for current purposes. Ignorance is much more common (and hence likely) than disingenuity.

johnchristopher 7y ago

We left the 18th and 19th century a long time ago. It's not disingenuous to single out China for this behavior since China is one of the biggest player doing it and reaping so much from it in our time. Plus, whataboutism.

sangnoir 7y ago
> We left the 18th and 19th century a long time ago. So? It's not like the US didn't know that it was breaking British laws back then. IP protectionism is nothing new, it is is fair to make comparisons to 18th/19th century events.
- pinkfoot 7y ago
  > it is is fair to make comparisons to 18th/19th century events? Yes
- johnchristopher 7y ago
  It all depends of what you make of that comparison. Are you saying it's okay because others did it before ? That it shouldn't be debated ? What's the position ? What is the point of preventing people from saying China is playing the IP theft game hard at the moment ?
  - sangnoir 7y ago
    > Are you saying it's okay because others did it before ? Yes and no - it depends entirely on whose perspective you are arguing from (upstart vs. establishment), and even that changes over time. For the US, it used to be okay, but no longer is. Also it's not "others" who did it before, but the very same nation-state that is now screaming blue murder. > That it shouldn't be debated ? Oh, it should absolutely be debated, but the US has no moral high ground when making its arguments. Turnabout is fair play
    - johnchristopher 7y ago
      > Also it's not "others" who did it before, but the very same nation-state that is now screaming blue murder. Well, this is the classic continuity problem: is the US from centuries ago the same US of today ? > Oh, it should absolutely be debated, but the US has no moral high ground when making its arguments. Turnabout is fair play I am from Europe. Anyway, I disagree. Moral stances aren't cancelled because past wrongdoings.

virtue3 7y ago

No no no, those are American HEROES sir. https://www.history.com/news/industrial-revolution-spies-europe https://www.history.com/news/industrial-revolution-spies-eur... /s But very good point. I feel like military tech is another issue entirely tho. And concerns me with what I'm perceiving as an arms race with carriers and fighter jets over I presume China's ability to project power within their naval territory .

tatrajim 7y ago
Note how all comments citing US industrial espionage fail to mention that the young U.S. was at war with Great Britain from 1776-83 and again in 1812 when the Brits burned much of Washington, D.C. is the contemporary parallel that China is now asserting they are at war with the U.S. and therefore can appropriate technology at will?
- sand_castles 7y ago
  Same thing can be said about the US trying to overthrow the CCP during Mao when they banned food export during their great famine to try and trigger a revolution to remove them from power. Invaded Chinese sovereign territory during the Korean war and got beat back into the current border of South Korea. Supported a western friendly government during WW2 to take over China. In International relations there are no rules.
  - adventured 7y ago
    > Same thing can be said about the US trying to overthrow the CCP during Mao when they banned food export Did you mean when the US saved China from being obliterated by nuclear weapons by the USSR in 1969? Or when the US saved China from continued genocide by the Empire of Japan by almost single-handedly defeating the Japanese military in the Pacific? Maybe you mean when the US funded the build-out of modern China through trade & commerce and not only allowed them into the WTO, but openly invited them in (we got rewarded nicely for that). > Invaded Chinese sovereign territory during the Korean war and got beat back into the current border of South Korea. When the US tried to save the people of North Korea - the Korean War was a UN military mission - from half a century of extreme poverty, genocide and misery that continues to this day (and with zero human rights). With China on the opposite side of that equation, supporting the outcome of genocide, dictatorship, zero human rights, extreme poverty. Meanwhile South Korea became an affluent, liberal democracy. > Supported a western friendly government during WW2 to take over China. When the US tried to spare China half a century of extreme poverty, genocide and misery. China could have developed much faster and with human rights, as with South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan - and without the slaughter of tens of millions of people.

Covzire 7y ago

No nation on earth has benefited more and stolen more from the west than China. Calling them a developing nation when most of the world's high technology is built there is a little disingenuous too.

K0SM0S 7y ago

I attended a top 5 business school in France at the turn of the century. We had partnerships with similar schools in NYC, Tokyo, Sydney, you name it. It was taught in first year of international business classes that outsourcing abroad was functionally equivalent to a transfer of technology — so you always had to factor in the time it took for your magic low-cost solution to fade out and become your competitor, essentially, but not just them: by then the whole market has access to that cost structure, so you have to keep finding new lower-cost solutions, and keep innovating on your technological part (HQ in Europe, USA, Japan, etc). It's just international business 101, really, and has been for at least 20 years in my personal experience — but I'm pretty sure I read articles from the 1970s describing this process, because Japan was the first one to pull it off brilliantly. People focus on China because somebody is waiving that name a lot and his voice carries a lot through the media; but this is definitely just how the world works, and has been forever — if you ask workers from the next village to come and help build stuff with your super tech, it won't take long before they replicate the process over there. And that's called culture, knowledge, it lives and grows and moves like populations of viruses or molecules, it's been modeled for some time in anthropology at that macro-level.

jariel 7y ago
This is a misleading narrative in the context of the charges against Huawei. To somehow equate the direct theft of IP and innovation as just 'shared culture and knowledge' completely avoids the material criminality at hand. Huawei is charged with literally incentivizing their employees to steal knowledge and IP, and of directly copying designs, on a systematic and widespread scale. These activities are instituted far beyond just Huawei. This is not a situation of the natural flow of industrial knowledge, it's direct theft.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- sneak 7y ago
  The concept of IP is a relatively recent invention, created by legislatures to prop up specific industries hurt by copying of data, and, as is being demonstrated, not everyone agrees that it should be treated the same as existing systems of physical property. You wouldn’t download a car. But I would. I don’t think it’s possible to steal information.

chrisjc 7y ago

So you're saying that we shouldn't feel sorry for these 20th/21st century companies because of what happened in the 18th and 19th centuries? The whataboutisms are nauseating. > Pretending this is somehow how China specifically operates is disingenuous. No one is pretending this is how China specifically operates. This IS how certain entities from China operate. Especially certain SOE that have the backing of the CCP.

chillacy 7y ago
I’m not sure the whataboutism comparison helps if it’s still unclear if any superpower has been able to attain economic dominance without committing some IP theft. Japan, the UK, America, Germany, etc. If there ever was a country which played fair, they didn’t make it very far.

gootdude 7y ago

Any particular books you’d recommend?

shadofx 7y ago

Nobody claimed that China is the only one to steal. Brits stole tea trees from China. Americans stole textile manufacturing from Brits. Perhaps if those Yankees could have pointed at the Brits stealing tea trees, then the Brits would have been struck with a sense of self-realization of their own hypocrisy, and let the Yanks make off with those machine designs with no hassle?

kragen 7y ago

It's really uncalled for to accuse them of being disingenuous. Please assume good faith. They might just be ignorant.

throw0101a 7y ago

> Just look at U.S. industrial espionage in Europe during the 18th-19th century when it was developing. You are answering criticism with criticism: * https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/tu-quoque https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/tu-quoque * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque

jvanderbot 7y ago

What is with this argument that US did it 150 years ago (or X years), so it must be OK for China to do it? Is that how it works at work? Where one person steals your credit and therefore you feel it is OK to forever steal their credit? Is it what you would teach your children or how you would expect the criminal justice system to work? (Oh, everyone seems to break the law, so we'll just ignore laws in your case).

chillacy 7y ago
Hmm no but if everyone in MLB did steroids to get to where they are then I’m not going to be that surprised when I find out the rookie is juicing.
- jvanderbot 7y ago
  You wont be surprised, but you'll punish the rookie or anyone else who fails a drug test just the same. Im not surprised corps and countries steal from eachother, but I expect them to be punished when caught.
  - chillacy 7y ago
    Oh totally I am of the opinion that the US needs to step up its IP protection. It only makes strategic sense to protect your competitive advantage. I'm just pointing out that every other nation seems to have gone through a phase of "cheating" to get to where they are, to the point where I can't even say with 100% certainty that it's possible to become a technological superpower without doing it.

jariel 7y ago

"Pretending this is somehow how China specifically operates is disingenuous." Once again the Chinese 'moral relativism' argument I think falls flat. "Hey look, 500 years ago someone did something, so hey, it's ok" What is 'disingenuous' is this kind of rhetoric that completely denies the material issues at hand. China (and not just Huawei) has been systematically stealing and cheating far beyond anyone else (by the way, probably anyone else in history not that it matters), and this is really just the tip of the iceberg. These charges are well warranted, and they should be applied to any number of entities who've encroached on general principles of trade. If China wants to play with such shenanigans, it's fine actually, it's their choice to use this strategy, but the response should be pretty forceful as well.