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Gunpowder, modern canal building with locks, porcelain? Just off the top of my head. Porcelain is a particularly relevant example; Europeans experimented with

by retrac 5y ago

Gunpowder, modern canal building with locks, porcelain? Just off the top of my head. Porcelain is a particularly relevant example; Europeans experimented with it for about a century, intentionally trying to duplicate the Chinese process, finally having success c. 1700 or so with trade secrets being smuggled out by the Jesuits. But these days I think it's the immaterial cultural/cognitive tools that came from China which tend to be underrated. For example, the Chinese invented the concept of the civil service and examinations, as we think of them today. Meritocratic experts admitted based solely on an anonymous written examination (duplicated by scribes so even the handwriting couldn't given the applicant away). This would influence the British East India Company, which ultimately led to it being implemented in Britain: > Even as late as ten years after the competitive examination plan was passed, people still attacked it as an "adopted Chinese culture." Alexander Baillie-Cochrane, 1st Baron Lamington insisted that the English "did not know that it was necessary for them to take lessons from the Celestial Empire."[184] In 1875, Archibald Sayce voiced concern over the prevalence of competitive examinations, which he described as "the invasion of this new Chinese culture." I'm not sure that's patentable, though.

onionisafruit 5y ago
All of those things were taken well after any reasonable patent would have expired, so I don’t think they are comparable to the ip theft currently being discussed in this thread. I thought the upstream comment was talking about more recent examples. Did China try to prevent gunpowder or porcelain from being made by outsiders?
- oytis 5y ago
  They definitely did try to keep porcelain a secret. As of gunpowder it wasn't stolen by Europeans, rather it seems that it was Mongol invasion that let the knowledge spread.
  - onionisafruit 5y ago
    Thanks. I didn’t know anything about porcelain’s origin. I’m adding porcelain’s wikipedia page to my “to-read” list.
- sangnoir 5y ago
  > All of those things were taken well after any reasonable patent would have expired, so I don’t think they are comparable to the ip theft currently being discussed in this thread. "IP" is broader than patents that tend to have an expiry date - but even the expiration periods of patents is determined by the host government and not the appropriator. The US has a lot of classified information that would have long since expired had it been a patent, e.g. 1970's nuclear tech, alloys used in submarines, stealth coating on jets. Porcelain and the other examples gp gave would have fallen under the blanket of "National Security" rather than patents.
oytis 5y ago
> the Chinese invented the concept of the civil service and examinations, as we think of them today. That's a bit of overstatement I think, regarding the civil service I mean. Civil service was known in Babylon, in Egypt and in Roman Empire. From some point Roman Empire also introduced requirements for public servants' education. Not a formalized meritocratic system like in Han China, but we don't have a formalized examination of public servants today either.
- AtlasBarfed 5y ago
  Which is why a guy whose primary managerial experience was equestrian shows was in charge of FEMA when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. Heck of a job brownie!
Retric 5y ago
It’s often stated that the Chinese invented gunpowder, but we have evidence that it existed hundreds of years before it’s supposed date of invention making the original inventor completely unknown. That said, people living in what is now China likely invented some of the earliest forms of guns, but again it’s fairly ambiguous. Fire Lances for example where used circa 1132CE which didn’t fire projectiles. Mongols used gunpowder bombs delivered via trebuchet in 1274, but again it’s unclear where those bombs where first invented and if cannons where unknown or simply ineffective. All we can say is over these timescales information was flowing in and out of various nations. Possibly because the actual inventors where also moving around. By 1350 cannons were in common use in Italy and much of Europe, but there is evidence they existed in some form in 1128. Though if they had been effective it was likely they would have seen widespread use much earlier. What’s more clear is many early advancements occurred in Asia and quickly spread.
lenkite 5y ago
Gunpowder might have been invented by China, but it was copied and refined by the Arabs. The Muslim world acquired the gunpowder formula some time after 1240, but before 1280, by which time Hasan al-Rammah had written, in Arabic, recipes for gunpowder, instructions for the purification of saltpeter, and descriptions of gunpowder incendiaries. Gunpowder arrived in the Middle East, possibly through India, from China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_gunpowder#Spread_throughout_Eurasia_and_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_gunpowder#Spread_th...

by retrac 5y ago

onionisafruit 5y ago

All of those things were taken well after any reasonable patent would have expired, so I don’t think they are comparable to the ip theft currently being discussed in this thread. I thought the upstream comment was talking about more recent examples. Did China try to prevent gunpowder or porcelain from being made by outsiders?

oytis 5y ago
They definitely did try to keep porcelain a secret. As of gunpowder it wasn't stolen by Europeans, rather it seems that it was Mongol invasion that let the knowledge spread.
- onionisafruit 5y ago
  Thanks. I didn’t know anything about porcelain’s origin. I’m adding porcelain’s wikipedia page to my “to-read” list.
sangnoir 5y ago
> All of those things were taken well after any reasonable patent would have expired, so I don’t think they are comparable to the ip theft currently being discussed in this thread. "IP" is broader than patents that tend to have an expiry date - but even the expiration periods of patents is determined by the host government and not the appropriator. The US has a lot of classified information that would have long since expired had it been a patent, e.g. 1970's nuclear tech, alloys used in submarines, stealth coating on jets. Porcelain and the other examples gp gave would have fallen under the blanket of "National Security" rather than patents.

oytis 5y ago

> the Chinese invented the concept of the civil service and examinations, as we think of them today. That's a bit of overstatement I think, regarding the civil service I mean. Civil service was known in Babylon, in Egypt and in Roman Empire. From some point Roman Empire also introduced requirements for public servants' education. Not a formalized meritocratic system like in Han China, but we don't have a formalized examination of public servants today either.

AtlasBarfed 5y ago
Which is why a guy whose primary managerial experience was equestrian shows was in charge of FEMA when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. Heck of a job brownie!

Retric 5y ago

It’s often stated that the Chinese invented gunpowder, but we have evidence that it existed hundreds of years before it’s supposed date of invention making the original inventor completely unknown. That said, people living in what is now China likely invented some of the earliest forms of guns, but again it’s fairly ambiguous. Fire Lances for example where used circa 1132CE which didn’t fire projectiles. Mongols used gunpowder bombs delivered via trebuchet in 1274, but again it’s unclear where those bombs where first invented and if cannons where unknown or simply ineffective. All we can say is over these timescales information was flowing in and out of various nations. Possibly because the actual inventors where also moving around. By 1350 cannons were in common use in Italy and much of Europe, but there is evidence they existed in some form in 1128. Though if they had been effective it was likely they would have seen widespread use much earlier. What’s more clear is many early advancements occurred in Asia and quickly spread.

lenkite 5y ago

Gunpowder might have been invented by China, but it was copied and refined by the Arabs. The Muslim world acquired the gunpowder formula some time after 1240, but before 1280, by which time Hasan al-Rammah had written, in Arabic, recipes for gunpowder, instructions for the purification of saltpeter, and descriptions of gunpowder incendiaries. Gunpowder arrived in the Middle East, possibly through India, from China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_gunpowder#Spread_throughout_Eurasia_and_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_gunpowder#Spread_th...