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Stealing IP is basically a blue shell. At some point probably China will be leading tech innovation and the West will have little incentive to respect their pat

Stealing IP is basically a blue shell. At some point probably China will be leading tech innovation and the West will have little incentive to respect their patents.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
samtho 3y ago
I just can’t see the PRC and the CCP in its current form sticking around long enough. Between their demographic collapse and pushback on globalization amongst some of the largest nations and economic zones who trade with China (not the mention China imports most of its food), we will see the CCP take an even firmer grasp just before it either collapses or disintegrates. We will likely see the largest cities revert to self-governance and then we will have a better understanding of the geopolitical landscape in which we will all operate in. If Hong Kong‘s economic and political influence positions it to self-govern once again, perhaps taking much of Guangdong with it, we may see more respect for global IP protections.
- solardev 3y ago
  Is fragmenting into city states more likely than the CCP continuing to change, as it has over the past few decades? Chinese cultural identity, centered around Han dominance and collectivism, has been a unifying force for quite some time. HK was a major exception because of British influence, but I have a hard time seeing the rest of the country willingly breaking up rather than just slowly forcing through change.
- inconceivable 3y ago
  ground breaking novel analysis: china is going to collapse any day now. for real this time. maybe if we keep repeating it enough, it will happen.
- dirtyid 3y ago
  PRC global trade increased by 1 trillion with a T in the last 4 years, more than the prior 10 years. That's the greatest expansion in globalism... ever. Most with the global south, some of which is redirected trade to western block who realized they can't decouple but only derisk while the PRC has increased global integration more than... ever. Meanwhile PRC is moving from 25% skilled workforce to 60/70/80% like an advanced economy by spamming ~5M stem per year - for next 20-30 years they'll be reaping the greatest concentrated pool of skilled labour demographic dividend... also ever. Maybe post 2060s demography will be an issue like JP whose problem is they couldn't replace skilled labour at parity and even then they just merely stayed... very competitive. That's what a PRC "collapse" will look like, a massive Japan (as in multiple Japans) where median projection paints 2100 PRC as the second largest country with a skilled workforce many times larger than 2023 PRC. Conveniently, also one that doesn't have to import calories/energy. That's the problem with focusing only on the demographic pyramid and not actual demographic workforce composition. Yes PRC will have demographic challenges, but demographic trends also point toward overwhelming PRC global competitiveness and geopolitical security.
  - samtho 3y ago
    PRC global trade is propped up by extremely low-value, often non-essential goods on the export side and they import much of very essential food supplies and some other raw materials to make these goods. We have already seen a shift in manufacturing to Mexico which benefits the US with a skilled labor force enjoying low CoL, all within the North American free trade zone. Low-end semiconductor manufacturing is one of the last essential things the world imports from China, but much of this is already moving to Vietnam. Medium to high-end semiconductor manufacturing largely takes place in Japan, Taiwan, and the United States - all of which are allied together and will respect export restrictions. We will see Germany (another ally) step in once their fabrication facilities are complete and operational, maybe by 2026. Calling their wide-scale demographic collapse as merely “challenges” is disingenuous. This is a looming complete and total catastrophe that will spark a humanitarian crisis, the likes of which the world has not seen before. Their short-sighted one child policy they had into place from 1979 to 2015 has robbed them of more than half of their 30-40 year olds, people at their prime working age, just as their parents are entering retirement. The legal obligation of children to take care of their parents in their old age had put additional burden on the single child of each parental union. These adult children are putting off having a family of their own due to this. This cycle continues. And this is just the stuff we know about. We likely won’t even know how many people died of COVID-19, what are the figures of major events that we don’t even know about? Disinformation campaigns stamp out people speaking ill China, but when all this comes to a head, it will seem sudden but will the crescendo of compounding events, falling onto the next like dominos.
- wpietri 3y ago
  > I just can’t see the PRC and the CCP in its current form sticking around long enough. I took an upper-level course from a China expert in 1989. At the time, a big question was exactly how long China's government could maintain national unity unity in the face of the many contradictory forces pulling at it. Turns out the answer was: longer than a lot of Westerners thought.
solardev 3y ago
It's not even the same system though. When some Chinese company gets big enough, they just get partially or wholly subsumed by the government in a quasi-nationalization. IP and patents don't have much meaning in such a system. They aren't even much protected from themselves, much less from foreign pirates. They're not quite communist but they don't protect individual property rights to the same degree that we do. If we stole their designs they'd probably just shrug, but we'd still have to contend with our own laws and domestic competitors and international trade agreements with other Western nations, while they just continue on their merry way, growing and growing while securing logistics and supply routes from a bunch of small countries and mines. At the end of the day, their system can more efficiently organize national production around some shared goal. Ours allows more independent experimentation and a faster pace of innovation. But once they have their minds set on something, collectively, I don't think our market would be able to keep pace unless we keep being able to technologically leapfrog them. But that can only last for so long, especially as our education continues to weaken...
- msla 3y ago
  > At the end of the day, their system can more efficiently organize national production around some shared goal. That sounds like propaganda. Oligopolies are historically hilariously inefficient, and China's brain drain hardly seems like it portends well for them: https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-brain-drain-threatens-its-future-dbe38096 https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-brain-drain-threatens-it... https://archive.ph/ACMyG https://archive.ph/ACMyG https://web.archive.org/web/20170225132236/http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/01/world/asia/wary-of-future-many-professionals-leave-china.html?pagewanted=all https://web.archive.org/web/20170225132236/http://www.nytime... https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-s-millionaire-exodus-as-wealthy-flee-with-america-the-preferred-destination-9069551.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-s-millio...
  - dirtyid 3y ago
    PRC state driven industrial policies are hilariously efficient against entrenched (western) incumbants, because the alternative is to not be competitive at all since new competitors simply can't compete against moat of established western companies with resources that rival government funding, no less US cheap money. PRC scale is large enough to do that, meanwhile most countries/blocs too small or uncoordinated to even try. That's why US/west copying PRC industrial policies, because PRC industrial policy is initially "inefficient", and then they become absurdly efficient, saturating domestic market at first, then export massive surplus to globe, and eats away at western shares. Analysis of PRC moving up value chain and global export share on PV, telecom, android smartphone, display panel shows reduction in operating margin of leading companies by 50-90%. Hence US is trying to stop PRC semi. And I'm guessing west on PRC EV soon. Because the efficiency of PRC indy policy is also measured in making western companies less productive. As for PRC brain drain, Chinese academics/talent in west floating back to PRC in record numbers. Those are good portends vs statistically insignificant % of millionaires trying to hide their money abroad. Which entire ignores the fact that PRC generates so much domestic talent now that west can't meaningfuly braindrain even if they wanted to. PRC is in process of milking the greatest high skill demographic divident in recorded history. It took PRC 20 years to build up ~15M STEM talent to catch up in west in most sectors except extremely difficult integration projects like aviation and semi. She's generating that much talent every 3-4 years now. E: over post limit Yet the west copies PRC, an "unserious" regime, none the less. From PRC content moderation, to surveillance, to industrial policies, there's more convergence than divergence. Because PRC is prescient. Enough so to be labelled as only US competitor who is capable of reshaping global order.
dirtyid 3y ago
Which is IMO fine for PRC since it's manufacturing base can always out compete west on cost. The real issue is IP law protects incumbents, predominantly western companies. Stats from a few years ago was PRC was paying $6 in IP to US for every $1 it took. It's a rigged game with rules made by west to benefit west. It's unsustainable. As PRC catches up, would it like a world where their IP gets respected? Yes, but the second best is a world where western IP gets increasingly ignored because that deals disproportionate damage to those with most profitable IP portfolios.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
balloonthief 3y ago
It's a tale as old as trade itself, and the US was just as guilty in its infancy: https://theworld.org/stories/2014-02-18/us-complains-other-nations-are-stealing-us-technology-america-has-history https://theworld.org/stories/2014-02-18/us-complains-other-n...
kmeisthax 3y ago
Prusa's comments here are very important. In this specific case, China is not "stealing intellectual property" in the sense that they are using it without a license; they are literally stealing title to the inventions in question, which is way worse. Of course, the obvious solution would be to not respect international patent priority from China, but that is tantamount to fighting a trade war, which has significant strategic implications. You can't sue the US to force them to de-normalize trade relations with China for the same reason why you can't sue the US to force the army to nuke China.
doublespanner 3y ago
It's not easy to go from catching up to leading... Maybe China can but it seems far more likely that they are destined to settle in a few miles behind the west like the rest of the Asian tigers.

Stealing IP is basically a blue shell. At some point probably China will be leading tech innovation and the West will have little incentive to respect their patents.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

samtho 3y ago

I just can’t see the PRC and the CCP in its current form sticking around long enough. Between their demographic collapse and pushback on globalization amongst some of the largest nations and economic zones who trade with China (not the mention China imports most of its food), we will see the CCP take an even firmer grasp just before it either collapses or disintegrates. We will likely see the largest cities revert to self-governance and then we will have a better understanding of the geopolitical landscape in which we will all operate in. If Hong Kong‘s economic and political influence positions it to self-govern once again, perhaps taking much of Guangdong with it, we may see more respect for global IP protections.

solardev 3y ago
Is fragmenting into city states more likely than the CCP continuing to change, as it has over the past few decades? Chinese cultural identity, centered around Han dominance and collectivism, has been a unifying force for quite some time. HK was a major exception because of British influence, but I have a hard time seeing the rest of the country willingly breaking up rather than just slowly forcing through change.
inconceivable 3y ago
ground breaking novel analysis: china is going to collapse any day now. for real this time. maybe if we keep repeating it enough, it will happen.
dirtyid 3y ago
PRC global trade increased by 1 trillion with a T in the last 4 years, more than the prior 10 years. That's the greatest expansion in globalism... ever. Most with the global south, some of which is redirected trade to western block who realized they can't decouple but only derisk while the PRC has increased global integration more than... ever. Meanwhile PRC is moving from 25% skilled workforce to 60/70/80% like an advanced economy by spamming ~5M stem per year - for next 20-30 years they'll be reaping the greatest concentrated pool of skilled labour demographic dividend... also ever. Maybe post 2060s demography will be an issue like JP whose problem is they couldn't replace skilled labour at parity and even then they just merely stayed... very competitive. That's what a PRC "collapse" will look like, a massive Japan (as in multiple Japans) where median projection paints 2100 PRC as the second largest country with a skilled workforce many times larger than 2023 PRC. Conveniently, also one that doesn't have to import calories/energy. That's the problem with focusing only on the demographic pyramid and not actual demographic workforce composition. Yes PRC will have demographic challenges, but demographic trends also point toward overwhelming PRC global competitiveness and geopolitical security.
- samtho 3y ago
  PRC global trade is propped up by extremely low-value, often non-essential goods on the export side and they import much of very essential food supplies and some other raw materials to make these goods. We have already seen a shift in manufacturing to Mexico which benefits the US with a skilled labor force enjoying low CoL, all within the North American free trade zone. Low-end semiconductor manufacturing is one of the last essential things the world imports from China, but much of this is already moving to Vietnam. Medium to high-end semiconductor manufacturing largely takes place in Japan, Taiwan, and the United States - all of which are allied together and will respect export restrictions. We will see Germany (another ally) step in once their fabrication facilities are complete and operational, maybe by 2026. Calling their wide-scale demographic collapse as merely “challenges” is disingenuous. This is a looming complete and total catastrophe that will spark a humanitarian crisis, the likes of which the world has not seen before. Their short-sighted one child policy they had into place from 1979 to 2015 has robbed them of more than half of their 30-40 year olds, people at their prime working age, just as their parents are entering retirement. The legal obligation of children to take care of their parents in their old age had put additional burden on the single child of each parental union. These adult children are putting off having a family of their own due to this. This cycle continues. And this is just the stuff we know about. We likely won’t even know how many people died of COVID-19, what are the figures of major events that we don’t even know about? Disinformation campaigns stamp out people speaking ill China, but when all this comes to a head, it will seem sudden but will the crescendo of compounding events, falling onto the next like dominos.
wpietri 3y ago
> I just can’t see the PRC and the CCP in its current form sticking around long enough. I took an upper-level course from a China expert in 1989. At the time, a big question was exactly how long China's government could maintain national unity unity in the face of the many contradictory forces pulling at it. Turns out the answer was: longer than a lot of Westerners thought.

solardev 3y ago

It's not even the same system though. When some Chinese company gets big enough, they just get partially or wholly subsumed by the government in a quasi-nationalization. IP and patents don't have much meaning in such a system. They aren't even much protected from themselves, much less from foreign pirates. They're not quite communist but they don't protect individual property rights to the same degree that we do. If we stole their designs they'd probably just shrug, but we'd still have to contend with our own laws and domestic competitors and international trade agreements with other Western nations, while they just continue on their merry way, growing and growing while securing logistics and supply routes from a bunch of small countries and mines. At the end of the day, their system can more efficiently organize national production around some shared goal. Ours allows more independent experimentation and a faster pace of innovation. But once they have their minds set on something, collectively, I don't think our market would be able to keep pace unless we keep being able to technologically leapfrog them. But that can only last for so long, especially as our education continues to weaken...

msla 3y ago
> At the end of the day, their system can more efficiently organize national production around some shared goal. That sounds like propaganda. Oligopolies are historically hilariously inefficient, and China's brain drain hardly seems like it portends well for them: https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-brain-drain-threatens-its-future-dbe38096 https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-brain-drain-threatens-it... https://archive.ph/ACMyG https://archive.ph/ACMyG https://web.archive.org/web/20170225132236/http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/01/world/asia/wary-of-future-many-professionals-leave-china.html?pagewanted=all https://web.archive.org/web/20170225132236/http://www.nytime... https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-s-millionaire-exodus-as-wealthy-flee-with-america-the-preferred-destination-9069551.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-s-millio...
- dirtyid 3y ago
  PRC state driven industrial policies are hilariously efficient against entrenched (western) incumbants, because the alternative is to not be competitive at all since new competitors simply can't compete against moat of established western companies with resources that rival government funding, no less US cheap money. PRC scale is large enough to do that, meanwhile most countries/blocs too small or uncoordinated to even try. That's why US/west copying PRC industrial policies, because PRC industrial policy is initially "inefficient", and then they become absurdly efficient, saturating domestic market at first, then export massive surplus to globe, and eats away at western shares. Analysis of PRC moving up value chain and global export share on PV, telecom, android smartphone, display panel shows reduction in operating margin of leading companies by 50-90%. Hence US is trying to stop PRC semi. And I'm guessing west on PRC EV soon. Because the efficiency of PRC indy policy is also measured in making western companies less productive. As for PRC brain drain, Chinese academics/talent in west floating back to PRC in record numbers. Those are good portends vs statistically insignificant % of millionaires trying to hide their money abroad. Which entire ignores the fact that PRC generates so much domestic talent now that west can't meaningfuly braindrain even if they wanted to. PRC is in process of milking the greatest high skill demographic divident in recorded history. It took PRC 20 years to build up ~15M STEM talent to catch up in west in most sectors except extremely difficult integration projects like aviation and semi. She's generating that much talent every 3-4 years now. E: over post limit Yet the west copies PRC, an "unserious" regime, none the less. From PRC content moderation, to surveillance, to industrial policies, there's more convergence than divergence. Because PRC is prescient. Enough so to be labelled as only US competitor who is capable of reshaping global order.

dirtyid 3y ago

Which is IMO fine for PRC since it's manufacturing base can always out compete west on cost. The real issue is IP law protects incumbents, predominantly western companies. Stats from a few years ago was PRC was paying $6 in IP to US for every $1 it took. It's a rigged game with rules made by west to benefit west. It's unsustainable. As PRC catches up, would it like a world where their IP gets respected? Yes, but the second best is a world where western IP gets increasingly ignored because that deals disproportionate damage to those with most profitable IP portfolios.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

balloonthief 3y ago

It's a tale as old as trade itself, and the US was just as guilty in its infancy: https://theworld.org/stories/2014-02-18/us-complains-other-nations-are-stealing-us-technology-america-has-history https://theworld.org/stories/2014-02-18/us-complains-other-n...

kmeisthax 3y ago

Prusa's comments here are very important. In this specific case, China is not "stealing intellectual property" in the sense that they are using it without a license; they are literally stealing title to the inventions in question, which is way worse. Of course, the obvious solution would be to not respect international patent priority from China, but that is tantamount to fighting a trade war, which has significant strategic implications. You can't sue the US to force them to de-normalize trade relations with China for the same reason why you can't sue the US to force the army to nuke China.

doublespanner 3y ago

It's not easy to go from catching up to leading... Maybe China can but it seems far more likely that they are destined to settle in a few miles behind the west like the rest of the Asian tigers.