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"We've seen stories of chinese corporations blatantly stealing western company technologies and the chinese government doing nothing about it." Hahaha! The Chi

"We've seen stories of chinese corporations blatantly stealing western company technologies and the chinese government doing nothing about it." Hahaha! The Chinese Government is not "doing nothing about it". The Government is the main supporter of this. To get their country to the technology level of Western society is their main objective, like it should be natural, politicians looking for the interest of the people they represent. What do you expect? Chinese following the interest of foreigners? We were working on China and they offered us to pay us double for the detailed plans of the (Western) machine we were building. Of course we said no, so they offered us 5 times. We again said no and they offered us 10 times. Obviously if you accept the offer it will be the last time you sell a machine to them. If you give them the plans, like you could do with less valuable things, now they will offer you money for a detailed explanation of the plans, as Chinese education is very lacking today.

lawnchair_larry 12y ago
I wonder if their policy on this will discourage innovation from within their country and ultimately harm their progress. I'm not sure that "cheating" is sustainable.
- S4M 12y ago
  I guess this cheating is sustainable as long as China's technology keeps lagging behind the Western one. Once it has caught up, well, there won't be anything to copy and the Chinese corporations will have to innovate by themselves. I'd consider cheating as a low hanging fruit for the countries lagging behind in R&D.
- Htsthbjig 12y ago
  On the contrary, I believe it is making their progress extremely fast. You don't have to wait 20 years in order to use something, like patents force you to do. You don't need to ask for permission to anyone. You don't need to be rich. For example if you can read a patent on making a chemical vapor deposition system for making semiconductors and implement it, you just can do it and start making semiconductors right now. They will be very bad quality, but you will improve over time because you are actually doing it, and being so cheap you will sell lots of them. Of course, when a significant Chinese status quo has been created on all areas of technology, they will start respecting their own Chinese patents.
  - westiseast 12y ago
    I agree that's the aim. the difficulty is that the country, academics and 'innovators' have been raised on shortcuts, cheating, stealing technology, reverse engineering and generally making functional but often poor quality copies of foreign products. There shouldn't be a great gap between this state of affairs and true innovation, but conceptually it's a million miles.

lawnchair_larry 12y ago

I wonder if their policy on this will discourage innovation from within their country and ultimately harm their progress. I'm not sure that "cheating" is sustainable.

S4M 12y ago
I guess this cheating is sustainable as long as China's technology keeps lagging behind the Western one. Once it has caught up, well, there won't be anything to copy and the Chinese corporations will have to innovate by themselves. I'd consider cheating as a low hanging fruit for the countries lagging behind in R&D.
Htsthbjig 12y ago
On the contrary, I believe it is making their progress extremely fast. You don't have to wait 20 years in order to use something, like patents force you to do. You don't need to ask for permission to anyone. You don't need to be rich. For example if you can read a patent on making a chemical vapor deposition system for making semiconductors and implement it, you just can do it and start making semiconductors right now. They will be very bad quality, but you will improve over time because you are actually doing it, and being so cheap you will sell lots of them. Of course, when a significant Chinese status quo has been created on all areas of technology, they will start respecting their own Chinese patents.
- westiseast 12y ago
  I agree that's the aim. the difficulty is that the country, academics and 'innovators' have been raised on shortcuts, cheating, stealing technology, reverse engineering and generally making functional but often poor quality copies of foreign products. There shouldn't be a great gap between this state of affairs and true innovation, but conceptually it's a million miles.