4 ms·

Why Is Piracy So Common in China? Confucian Cultural Traditions or Just Money?

3 points by keepamovin 6mo ago

keepamovin 6mo ago
See also: - China’s Biggest User of Pirated Software: Government : Computers: The state does not allocate money for legal purchases and cannot stop the copying. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-07-10-fi-22348-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-07-10-fi-22348-... (1995) - ELI5: Why and how does China get away with such blatant copying of Patented and protected items when it is a member of World Trade Organisation https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1sbqph/eli5_why_and_how_does_china_get_away_with_such/ https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1sbqph/e... (2013) - What Can China Teach Us About Software Piracy? https://www.revenera.com/blog/software-monetization/what-can-china-teach-us- https://www.revenera.com/blog/software-monetization/what-can... about-software-piracy/ (2015) - How to protect software copyright in China? https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=01cc3314-312b-4c05-9d90-79e8a6fb1e64 https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=01cc3314-312b... (2025)
jqpabc123 6mo ago
Communism --- Everything belongs to the "community". Long story short --- China has a hybrid system that is designed to defeat western capitalism. Internally, China retains a lot of communist elements. Information and technology is openly shared among Chinese companies. This avoids a lot of wasted time, effort and energy spent on non-productive, internal conflict --- things like IP lawsuits. Externally, China is strictly capitalistic. Nothing is shared without compensation. A simple and brutally efficient plan of attack designed by engineers --- not lawyers and con artists.
- keepamovin 6mo ago
  But then it’s just linked to ethnic ingroup so highly racist and supremacist. Not good for the world
  - jqpabc123 6mo ago
    This may be true --- but labels don't alter the brutal efficiency that the west is struggling to respond to. Personal opinion: About the only thing that could possibly stop China from economically strangling the west at this point is internal corruption.
    - keepamovin 6mo ago
      A culture that wants to "economically strangel" another/a different civilization is not good for the world. And it puts a lie to China's claim of "peaceful rise" and "common prosperity". Seeing the ethno-supremacist behaviors clearly is a good correction for the world. Collectivism cultures typically have lower outgroup empathy, which makes them "vulnerable" to forming this kind of hostility, I guess. The path you forsee may not even be good for China. Many other nations have falled into the trap of genetic supremacy based domination behavior - Germany and Japan. Both were also "brutally efficient". Both were stopped. This rolls back in history as a repeated pattern (Apartheid, Spanish, Umayyad, Mongols, Sparta). All are no more. I think the future of humanity is that we are destined to be resilient cooperative mixed-race species - much to the chagrin of the ethnic puritans of this age. Civilizations that are founded on individualism, and value-based, rather than clade-based inclusion - are probably going to be more resilient long term. In a sense the clade-based self-dealing you describe is a form of internal corruption - as its merit is bounded by genetics. The higher empathy of individualist cultures is also an advantage, in peace and war. Collectivists have higher empathy for the ingroup than outgroup. Individualist cultures have good ToM across the groups: making them both better friends, and worse deliberate enemies to have. Collectivist cultures lower ToM for outgroups makes them more enemy-like by default, but less efficient at being enemies deliberately.
      - jqpabc123 6mo ago
        I don't necessarily disagree with your moral judgments. I just don't think they carry much weight in China. The problem for the west is how to address this.
        6mo ago

3 points by keepamovin 6mo ago

See also: - China’s Biggest User of Pirated Software: Government : Computers: The state does not allocate money for legal purchases and cannot stop the copying. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-07-10-fi-22348-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-07-10-fi-22348-... (1995) - ELI5: Why and how does China get away with such blatant copying of Patented and protected items when it is a member of World Trade Organisation https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1sbqph/eli5_why_and_how_does_china_get_away_with_such/ https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1sbqph/e... (2013) - What Can China Teach Us About Software Piracy? https://www.revenera.com/blog/software-monetization/what-can-china-teach-us- https://www.revenera.com/blog/software-monetization/what-can... about-software-piracy/ (2015) - How to protect software copyright in China? https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=01cc3314-312b-4c05-9d90-79e8a6fb1e64 https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=01cc3314-312b... (2025)

jqpabc123 6mo ago

Communism --- Everything belongs to the "community". Long story short --- China has a hybrid system that is designed to defeat western capitalism. Internally, China retains a lot of communist elements. Information and technology is openly shared among Chinese companies. This avoids a lot of wasted time, effort and energy spent on non-productive, internal conflict --- things like IP lawsuits. Externally, China is strictly capitalistic. Nothing is shared without compensation. A simple and brutally efficient plan of attack designed by engineers --- not lawyers and con artists.

keepamovin 6mo ago
But then it’s just linked to ethnic ingroup so highly racist and supremacist. Not good for the world
- jqpabc123 6mo ago
  This may be true --- but labels don't alter the brutal efficiency that the west is struggling to respond to. Personal opinion: About the only thing that could possibly stop China from economically strangling the west at this point is internal corruption.
  - keepamovin 6mo ago
    A culture that wants to "economically strangel" another/a different civilization is not good for the world. And it puts a lie to China's claim of "peaceful rise" and "common prosperity". Seeing the ethno-supremacist behaviors clearly is a good correction for the world. Collectivism cultures typically have lower outgroup empathy, which makes them "vulnerable" to forming this kind of hostility, I guess. The path you forsee may not even be good for China. Many other nations have falled into the trap of genetic supremacy based domination behavior - Germany and Japan. Both were also "brutally efficient". Both were stopped. This rolls back in history as a repeated pattern (Apartheid, Spanish, Umayyad, Mongols, Sparta). All are no more. I think the future of humanity is that we are destined to be resilient cooperative mixed-race species - much to the chagrin of the ethnic puritans of this age. Civilizations that are founded on individualism, and value-based, rather than clade-based inclusion - are probably going to be more resilient long term. In a sense the clade-based self-dealing you describe is a form of internal corruption - as its merit is bounded by genetics. The higher empathy of individualist cultures is also an advantage, in peace and war. Collectivists have higher empathy for the ingroup than outgroup. Individualist cultures have good ToM across the groups: making them both better friends, and worse deliberate enemies to have. Collectivist cultures lower ToM for outgroups makes them more enemy-like by default, but less efficient at being enemies deliberately.
    - jqpabc123 6mo ago
      I don't necessarily disagree with your moral judgments. I just don't think they carry much weight in China. The problem for the west is how to address this.
      - 6mo ago