
China Steps Up Trade Secret Theft from US Companies - spoiledtechie
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-china-economic-espionage-20181116-story.html?id=1231
======
watertom
What's worse is that International companies have been just giving their
technology to the Chinese for years and years.

In order to do business in China, non-Chinese companies must partner with a
Chinese company. The International company shares their IP with their Chinese
counterpart, and the Chinese counterpart in turn shares the IP with the
__their __partner, the Chinese government. The Chinese government takes the IP
and shuffles the IP to the company or companies best suited to exploit the IP.
This has been taking place as long as China has been open to International
business.

International companies in a rush to get access to the largest single market
in the world have freely given away their IP, because they didn't think the
Chinese could ever catch up. Companies are now moving partnerships away from
China, and it's forcing the Chinese to steal the IP in order to keep their
edge.

I try very, very, hard to avoid buying products made in China. I"m OK with
every other country in the world, except China.

~~~
bobjordan
American here. I own two different companies in China.

“In order to do business in China, non-Chinese companies must Partner with a
Chinese company.”

These days, what you’ve asserted here, is only true in a very limited set of
circumstances.

For example, one of my companies is an engineering/supply chain consulting
firm and the other is a fully licensed CM factory. With our factory, I have
the China government paying me VAT tax rebates on export. I don’t have a
Chinese partner, for either of these companies.

That said, it is very difficult to get setup here, without a Chinese partner.
It is a difficult convoluted process. And, the locals have no incentive to see
a foreigner succeed.

But if Americans want to own a private factory here, and more fully control
their own IP and what they allow Chinese nationals to see. From my view as an
American that owns a factory in China. They can do it!

Get on a plane, come over here, stay a couple years getting it done, and
voila, you own your own factory in China, without a Chinese partner.

~~~
arbuge
Do you speak Chinese fluently? I'm guessing this would be difficult to do if
not...

~~~
bobjordan
My Chinese is still pretty basic. Yes, learning some conversational Chinese
and a few hundred Chinese characters pretty quickly, is required, if only to
keep sane. But, my Chinese communication skill wasn’t/isn’t/hasn’t been a
critical key success factor for business success. More important has been,
utilizing employees well and having the sense to recognize and call “bullshit”
when needed. Like, if a process seems illogical from a good business practices
or efficiency point of view. And someone is telling you something that seems
wrong. It’s probably wrong, and they don’t know what they are talking about.
And, learning quick, most of what you see here in China, is not as it appears
on the surface. Underneath, it’s probably a rats nest. Being a good detective
is required to survive.

~~~
NicoJuicy
How easy is it to get your money out of China?

~~~
bobjordan
Not very easy. The best structure seems to be, to setup a parent company in
Hong Kong. Then, setup a wholly owned subsidiary in China. Then, just send
enough money every month to keep the China operations going. It is easy to get
your money in and out of Hong Kong.

~~~
xor1
I went to Hong Kong earlier this year, and I was amused by how there were
luxury watch shops seemingly everywhere. My first assumption was that they
were for laundering money out of the mainland.

~~~
linkregister
There are likely more than enough rich people living in and traveling to Hong
Kong to organically keep these watch shops solvent.

------
shantanubala
This might be an unpopular opinion, but I'll express a counterpoint - viewing
the same situation through a different lens.

Put simply, the Chinese understand why American companies outsource their
labor to China. Chinese labor is cheaper, and they are under no illusions -
this outsourcing means that their own country experiences many of the negative
externalities of Western consumption, including pollution.

It's fair for American businesses to distrust Chinese companies and distrust
the Chinese government, but can't we all agree that they brought it on
themselves?

Which multinational corporation reasonably expects that the Chinese government
cares about their bottom line at all? And why do many ordinary Americans
experience such outrage on behalf of these multinationals? Of course, I
understand why their shareholders (and thus, many Americans) may be upset.

If anything, I'm angry they jumped at the opportunity to eradicate their
domestic workforce to a point where China has the opportunity to steal in the
first place.

~~~
rgbrenner
Americans are ok with companies outsourcing their labor to other countries...
as long as those countries play fair. The assumption is that in a fair game,
American's will find a way to win. But China doesn't play fair.

This is like you and me playing a game, and I find out you're a cheater.. and
you say, 'what are you upset about? You invited me here'

~~~
pbalau
> The assumption is that in a fair game, American's __will find __a way to
> win.

So, if America fails to find a way to win, the game is rigged? I mean, if this
über country doesn't find a way to win, game being rigged is the only
explanation... Where did I hear this before?

> This is like you and me playing a game, and I find out you're a cheater...

No, this is like you and me playing a game and if you don't win, you accuse me
of being a cheater.

~~~
phyller
Both you and the comment you are responding to are wrong because in
international trade there should not be one loser and one winner. There should
only be winners and no losers. That is not only possible but that is the
normal state, and why the world has been increasingly prosperous. It is not a
zero sum gain when two nations trade, they actually create wealth by each
doing what they do best and trading.

With this understanding, if any side finds that they are on the "losing" end
of a deal, they should be upset. The United States has increased its wealth
partially by increasing everyone else's wealth (as have other countries) and
that is the way it should be.

------
salimmadjd
OT - anecdotally, I'm seeing an uptick in anti-China reporting. Are you
feeling that too or is just me?

It almost feels like there is a concerted effort to confront China.

Now it could be that these articles are coming out organically from bottom to
top. Meaning ordinary journalists are seeing the potential threat of China
economically and technologically and are becoming more vocal about it.

Alternatively, it could be a top-down "agenda" to confront China and the media
is gradually setting the zeitgeist to confront China.

What are your thoughts?

~~~
livueta
One possibility is that it's a manifestation of the broader realization that
China will probably not end up democratizing as it continues to develop, in
contradiction to years of mainline thought that hoped for the emergence of a
neoliberal trading partner rather than a rich, technologically advanced yet
despotic state.

Previous discussion of an Economist article positing this:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16499939](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16499939)

If this is the case, it shouldn't be a surprise that reporting reflects this
broader shift in outlook. However, this isn't mutually exclusive with a top-
down edict, especially if the timeframe you're referring to is shorter than
that implied by the broader perceptual shift argument.

~~~
adventured
Just about everything that Americans and Europeans were sold on about China,
when it came to their entry into the WTO and acceptance on the global stage,
has turned out to be a lie.

Not only has there been zero democratization, it has gone rapidly backwards
during the Xi era. Nearly all human rights - the few that had been tangibly
acquired post Deng - have been revoked in China. In the decade prior to Xi
there was actually some limited freedom of speech occuring online, that is
mostly gone at this point. They've cracked down on pretty much everyone and
everything, even disappearing Marxist students protesting for better worker
protections recently.

It was a very foolish premise by the West, to think that all nations want the
same things culturally. That you can prod and shape the direction of
nations/cultures in such a manner.

------
tehlike
The idea behind trade war, among many other things, is this. We are giving out
our competitive edge. Getting fair trade is important, as much as the short
term pain is real, long term benefits are there. US companies have been at a
disadvantage in China due to government incentives for Chinese companies. This
cannot go on.

~~~
edoo
It can go beyond just simple incentives as well. Uber was effectively driven
out of China by the government 'picking' Didi. They wanted to reduce the size
of their military but didn't want unemployed soldiers and transitioned
literally millions of them into Didi drivers. You can't compete with that.

~~~
tehlike
I also read somewhere where uber drivers were "given tickets" while local law
enforcement turned a blind eye to didis. Definitely hard to compete.

~~~
mistermann
It's funny, Chinese ride sharing companies enjoy this exact same advantage in
Vancouver Canada. We remain a staunch ally.

~~~
hydrox24
What reading would you recommend about Chinese ride sharing companies in
Canada?

And is it Vancouver or Canada that is the ally?

------
freeflight
Cached version to bypass GDPR block:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20181118233008/http://www.latimes...](http://web.archive.org/web/20181118233008/http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-
na-pol-china-economic-espionage-20181116-story.html?id=1231)

~~~
severine
Thanks for the link, but would it be more accurate to call it the "LA Times
euro-block" or something like that?

~~~
TenaciousValor
You could, but it's not just the LA Times that acts this way. Many websites
have engaged in this behavior because of the restrictions imposed by the GDPR.
Lots of issues with the GDPR...

~~~
thedailymail
I just got back from a trip to several EU countries and can confirm that a lot
of US publishers do not appear to have been ready for GDPR. Several newspaper
websites simply blocked any access from an EU domain. (Of course VPNs let you
get around this.) It was also interesting to see how GDPR slightly penalizes
users of privacy features by placing must-click banners or entry pages in
front of every access attempt. Since websites cannot memorize your preferences
if you routinely remove cookies, you get a suboptimal user experience.

~~~
TenaciousValor
Publishers knew about the GDPR; there was a two-year grace period before the
GDPR went into effect, which ended earlier this year. No, it's a conscious
choice rooted in business.

News websites make substantial amounts of money through advertising. These ads
serve scripts which collect information about users. The collection of the
information isn't strictly the problem. It has to do with storage and consent.

For any company operating globally, the GDPR created two zones of
consideration: the EU and the not-EU. Data on EU citizens must remain on
servers located in the EU, UNLESS explicit consent by the user is provided and
the data is only used expressly for the purpose was intended.

Say you link up ad networks into your news website. The scripts the ad
agencies include with their ads don't ask for consent when collecting data.
This is standard practice across the Internet. To comply with GDPR, a news
website would have two options: scrap the ad scripts, or just don't let EU
citizens on the site. The not-EU has a lot more people than the EU, so
building a separate site wouldn't make financial sense. As a news organization
in 2018, you also need every cent you can find to stay afloat. Subscription
models don't work for every site, so you still need to provide "free" access
to the site by using ads.

Considering all of this, blocking the EU is often the best option for news
organizations. Not all, but some.

------
_cs2017_
There are some obvious measures that the US industry and government can take:
improved cyber security, limited access to information, sophisticated employee
surveillance, stiff jail term for offenders, background checks on employees
with privileged access, etc. However, those measures are already in place in
every company that has valuable IP to steal (and in many more companies that
do not have anything of value, but like to pretend that they do).

Of course, the US government can go all in, and require something similar to
the "Top Secret" classification for all employees working in sensitive high-
tech fields. This will certainly reduce trade theft, but that benefit is
likely to be dwarved by the damage to the economy from the loss in efficiency,
loss of access to foreign labor, and the change in culture: the smartest, most
creative and most energetic people often shy away from working in
organizations with military-grade security.

Foreign labor is often mentioned as the root cause. Removing all foreign
workers from sensitive areas will certainly make state-sponsored industrial
espionage more difficult. However, history and common sense suggests there are
plenty of US citizens perfectly willing to sell their corporate data to
outsiders. So the benefits are unlikely to be dramatic. On the other hand, the
economic cost to the US economy would be very high. Moreover, there's a chance
this will backfire really badly. Today, it's hard for many countries to keep
their best students from leaving for the US. If we solve that problem for
them, it may be the very thing they need to close the technological gap with
the US.

In general, it seems that state-sponsored espionage can only be controlled
with an agreement between states, which ultimately comes down to skillfully
negotiating the terms.

------
wangii
It's going to be unpopular.

I'd say it's the arrogance of American leads to the situation.

>> The Yinhe incident (Chinese: 银河号事件) was a false claim made in 1993 by the
United States government that the China-based regular container ship Yinhe
(银河; "Milky Way") was carrying chemical weapon materials to Iran. The US Navy
forced the Yinhe to stop in the international waters of the Indian Ocean for a
month. The final inspection report signed by the U.S., concluded that there
was no chemical weapon materials at all. However, the U.S. government refused
to apologize "because the United States had acted in good faith on
intelligence", even though the Chinese were proven innocent.

What's not mentioned in the wikipedia page, is that US cut off the GPS of
Yinhe container ship to force the search. It has been a wake up call for
Chinese government.

~~~
akarambir
A somewhat similar situation happened with India when in 1999, India-Pak
Kargil war, the US denied India access to its GPS satellites. It forced India
to have its own Regional Navigation
System([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Regional_Navigation_Sat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Regional_Navigation_Satellite_System)).

Countries realise that US acts as bully when they can. China just is acting in
its own interest. Though as an Indian, I have my own problems with China
policies, the US companies crying about IP theft is just them not owning upto
their previous actions(of shifting major IP to china due to cheap labour).

~~~
_iyig
It sounds like you many think GPS is property of the global community, and
access to it - which the U.S. freely grants worldwide for the public good - is
some kind of right. It is not. GPS was financed, developed, and deployed by
the United States government, originally for military purposes. It is operated
and maintained by the United States Air Force. American taxpayers foot the
bill for this maintenance.

If we return to your example, we find India prosecuting a war with the use of
American military technology. How exactly is it "bullying" for the U.S. to
deny India access to this advanced capability? India is free to fund, launch,
and maintain their own GPS alternative for Indian military purposes.

~~~
chmod775
> India is free to fund, launch, and maintain their own GPS alternative for
> Indian military purposes

That's (more or less) what everyone is doing right now... Military use
optional.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Regional_Navigation_S...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Regional_Navigation_Satellite_System)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeiDou_Navigation_Satellite_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeiDou_Navigation_Satellite_System)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(satellite_navigatio...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_\(satellite_navigation\))

Any aliens observing us creating 4 redundant navigation systems must think
we're fucking mental.

------
0x262d
This forum only has a few kinds of purely political topics and one of them,
oddly, is anti-China stuff. I don't understand it at all.

About the headline... the US and its allies have stolen from and taken
advantage of colonial countries like China for hundreds of years, and that is
directly responsible for the technological and economic advantage currently
enjoyed by the US - not western rationalism, "democracy" or some other warmed-
over, quietly racist answer like that. American companies can pay Chinese
people shit for grueling tasks and bring home superprofits from their labor
and have been doing exactly that for decades and decades. The Chinese state
sometimes goes along with this and sometimes does not and "steals" technology
back.

Stop buying into this nationalistic nonsense of us vs them. You are all going
to get us sucked into a world war. Instead, consider asking if the interests
of the billionaires who "own" these technologies that are being "stolen" align
with yours. Spoiler alert: if you're not a billionaire, you have less
interests in common with US billionaires than with Chinese workers.

Class struggle is heating up in the United States and in China and competing
companies have less room to continue exploiting people without violent
resistance, so they need to distract people by telling them to go to war with
Eastasia again. Please don't fall for it.

~~~
blub
It's not odd at all, what _is_ odd is how many defend China and point out the
US's past sins. If China feels it was ill-treated it should ask for
reparations, not freaking steal any piece of technology it can.

Furthermore:

1) China is stealing technology from everyone, not just the US.

2) They're also doing some hobby colonialism of their own in Africa.

Not to mention bullying anyone that dares call them out for their
concentration camps. So China seems to be one more bully on the international
stage. There's enough of those already.

~~~
0x262d
I never said China's ruling class weren't "bullies". What I am opposing is the
myopic belief in a nationalistic, us-vs-them mentality that transparently
exists to make people ignore the class differences staring them in the face at
home.

Also, ask for reparations? Like all the other times the US has happily granted
those??

And finally, at least you are seemingly frank about believing that the US
should be able to exploit other countries as the supreme "bully".

------
jbay808
By definition, trade secrets are not patented, as patenting requires
disclosure.

What do they mean by an "effort that pilfered as much as $8.75 billion in
patented American technology"?

~~~
brianpgordon
You can patent a technology and not put every single parameter and process
optimization and detail of supporting systems into the patent. Semi
fabrication is pretty much the most complex manufacturing process that humans
do anywhere.

It's like building a nuclear bomb. Any high school physics nerd knows
perfectly well how it works, but the US performed over a thousand nuclear
tests for a reason. The fine tuning is important.

~~~
matt4077
Fine tuning isn't really _that_ important. That's easily demonstrated by the
fact that "tests" #2 and #3 already happened in Japan.

~~~
brianpgordon
And those bombs were pathetically weak compared to modern weapons... chip fabs
don't just have to turn out one wafer per year, they have to be profitable.

------
throwaway487548
This is what globalization is all about. Someone, lets say US and EU, do very
costly and high skilled labour intensive R&D and then sell the results all
around the world (just take a look at what is going on in genetic engineering
and pharma - billions and billions are being paid in salaries and other
expenses every year, look at Uber, which develops its own AI software, while
losing billions, etc).

Of course, the soviets and chinese are unhappy, because they are self-proclaim
themselves as being no less "great" and capable, while, in fact, they have
nothing even vaguely comparable with the US R&D machine, fueled with top
talent and endless investment bank's money from all over the world (Saudis,
Softbank, Norwegian sovereign fund, etc).

And, of course, being an R&D hub of the world is absolute win in the long run.

The tiny Swiss being the world leaders of R&D in industrial robotics is
another great example. And soviets and chinese have nothing but propaganda,
false claims and unsupported imperial ambitions.

~~~
neolefty
Is the complaint, then, that China gets to profit from US-funded R&D?

Because genuinely, the human race as a whole is benefiting from that R&D — and
also from China's appropriation of it — by getting cheaply produced
implementations!

------
baybal2
They twist the facts quite a bit.

The alleged "stealing" of 900 files on premises of Micron Taiwan was the famed
incident with loss of USB flash with "keys to the kingdom."

The biggest counterargument to US version is the fact that the alleged spy was
the very person who sounded the alarm that he lost the USB flash. The only
uncertainty here is about whether it was USB flash or a phone. News sources
differ on that.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17375406](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17375406)

>An employee from mainland who previously worked at a competitor company
accidentally put coworker's phone into her bag along with papers on the table.
They guy thought that his phone was stolen and called police, police found his
phone in a locker of a coworker.

>During investigation of that theft, they stumbled on some company docs on the
phone, and opened an espionage case based on that. Why a defector would file a
police report on his accomplice?

------
shrewduser
Kick them back out of the wto

~~~
squarefoot
I would rather kick those irresponsible suits who kept offshoring every damn
piece of industry since the past century for immediate profit disregarding
entirely the long term results. This is an effect, not a cause.

------
georgeburdell
I’d be interested to know more about what the Obama administration threatened
in 2015 that caused such a dropoff in corporate hacking, when attacks have
dramatically increased in the face of a full-on trade war.

The Micron story makes me think when the other shoe will drop for another
company: AMD. They are (possibly, debatably) laundering X86 IP to China
through a joint venture. I guess it’s hard to steal what’s being given away?

~~~
greglindahl
"IP" means a lot of things. A license to produce a chip is one thing, a mask
for a particular design is another, and neither one will do much to help you
design new x86 products. You can see some stuff in the mask, but it's looking
at the chip through the wrong end of a telescope.

I don't know on what level AMD is cooperating with those folks, do you? And
even if they did sell the top-level design details, that's not Intel's
implementation.

~~~
georgeburdell
The US government has banned Intel/NVidia/AMD from selling compute units to
China for the purposes of supercomputers. AMD must tread carefully cooperating
in any way with them.

~~~
scarejunba
They can just use the Hygon Dhyana (the repackaged EPYC or whatever).

------
jorblumesea
If we really want China to play nice, there need to be consequences for their
actions. For example, despite all of this, they're still in the WTO. Despite
all of this, we will feed them trade secrets and establish Chinese offices.

Bad behavior goes unpunished, and good behavior isn't rewarded. What incentive
do they have _not_ to steal from us? Our handling of their transgressions is
naive to a fault.

------
booleandilemma
We should boycott China and refuse to buy their stolen technology.

------
spoiledtechie
This article reads like a top-secret spy story. Its very worrying how deep
their intellectual theft goes.

------
balls187
I imagine the anger here is the frustration that the Chinese seem to be so
brazen about their IP theft, but IP theft isn't just relegated to the Chinese
government and Chinese companies.

In light of _all_ the "bad" things the US does with little oversight, ensuring
US Technology is still top must be a major priority, and probably has droves
of covert operations to help US companies be competitive if needed. It's just
likely that the US doesn't have many sources to steal from.

I also have to believe this anger is cultural as well. As Americans, we're
brainwashed into black and white thinking, and to attach very high weight to
moral and ethical implications of decisions. "Always pay back your debts. If
you take out a mortgage, if you go bankrupt, you are a bad American."

I expect that Chinese culture has a different take regarding what we consider
"cheating."

~~~
electrograv
_> I also have to believe this anger is cultural as well. As Americans, we're
brainwashed into black and white thinking, and to attach very high weight to
moral and ethical implications of decisions._

I find it very strange that you are effectively calling culture
“brainwashing”. Would you prefer we have no cultural values at all? How do you
think that would even play out? Without a shared value system, you cannot have
civilization.

That said, your overall point is correct: Sometimes cultural value systems
differ in incompatible ways, unless reconciled somehow. Often, this means
being faced with the cold, hard reality of weighing the cost vs benefit of
“acting out” against a law or moral code expected of you by the other party
(whether or not your culture agrees with those laws or morals is irrelevant,
when we’re purely talking about tangible consequences).

If there are no consequences from us, I don’t think it’s fair we “play the
victim”. If we (the US) don’t want this behavior to continue, we must specify
and enforce a policy of tangible consequences that will occur in retaliation
for every single instance of IP theft that occurs.

~~~
balls187
> I find it very strange that you are effectively calling culture
> “brainwashing”. Would you prefer we have no cultural values at all? How do
> you think that would even play out? Without a shared value system, you
> cannot have civilization.

That's an extreme conclusion from my argument--that we (as Americans) are
indoctrinated into moral and ethical thinking even if such decisions aren't in
our best interest, while other Americans avoid such thinking and are able to
find success because they're not constrained by such beliefs.

There is much more to American values than blind obedience wrt paying back
debts.

American's can have a shared sense of moral and ethical standards without
creating an extreme adherence to such beliefs.

------
hiiq
"a stunning Chinese-backed effort that pilfered … patented American
technology."

Why, pray tell, if its patented did they have to steal it?

Surely they just had to download and read the patent from the chinese patent
office, in Chinese no less?

~~~
fspeech
Let's look at some of the facts of the case at the center of the report. This
is HN after all.

1\. The Chinese company paid close to $300 million to UMC, a Taiwanese fab,
for DRAM technology. The deal is reportedly structured highly favorable to UMC
with larger future milestone payments upon delivery.

2\. The transfer was approved by the Taiwan government. Taiwan is highly
sensitive about technology transfer to China. It is at the 32nm node, a
relatively dated technology node.

3\. UMC is the 3rd largest fab in the world capable of 14nm logic fabs. Logic
fabs used to be much more technologically sophisticated than DRAM fabs. Indeed
before the great DRAM price war Taiwan had quite a few small DRAM fabs
surviving on second hand equipment from logic fabs and logic fabs often tested
their fab startup by making DRAMs (with their density DRAMs are a great way to
flush out bugs in the manufacturing process). However DRAMs are very price
sensitive commodities -- being capable of making DRAMs and capable of making
profits from making DRAMs are two entirely different things.

4\. Micron bought Rexchip of Taiwan, which was one of those standalone DRAM
manufacturers that didn't survive. All the employees accused of theft are
Taiwanese and former employees of Rexchip.

5\. The Chinese company, Jinhua, had earlier out-muscled Micron in Chinese
court, using patents transferred from UMC to ban some Micron products for sale
in China.

6\. LA Times started with: "It was the great microchip heist — a stunning
Chinese-backed effort that pilfered as much as $8.75 billion in patented
American technology." But it later said: "Prosecutors estimate the information
was worth between $400 million and $8.75 billion."

------
xmly
Is it because China stopped importing garbage from the western world?

Once stopped acting as the trash can and labor cost becomes higher, China
becomes useless and a threat?

------
csense
Idea: Every time the Chinese (or any other nation) steals technology,
calculate its economic value, multiply it by a factor of 4 or something for
punitive effect, and send the Chinese government a bill. If they ignore it,
just raise some tariffs and tax their goods until the fine's paid.

~~~
sgift
This would work if China was a small country the west wouldn't depend on in
various ways. But China is literally "too big to fail" .. the west depends on
China in a myriad of ways, so they can do whatever they want.

------
gerdesj
"Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European
countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options
that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue
to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with
our award-winning journalism."

Wot? Surely a reasonably decent bunch of journos should have got to grips with
GDPR by now.

~~~
TenaciousValor
See my reply above for an explanation.

TL;DR: the reason is business, not necessarily incompetence.

------
addicted
How does complaining about Chinese IP theft square with HN complaints about IP
protections in TPP? Because pretty much the whole point of the IP protecrions
in TPP was to avoid the situation we see in China.

------
scarejunba
Information wants to be free, I suppose.

------
prolikewh0a
So?

This is just rich people whining about someone else being able to make their
products much cheaper. The whole world benefits from this, just not already
super rich patent & trademark holders who are anti-competitive & hurt
consumers.

Can anyone even tell me a negative that isn't just capital?

~~~
booleandilemma
_This is just rich people whining about someone else being able to make their
products much cheaper._

Stealing is stealing though, isn't it? Regardless of who benefits.

~~~
prolikewh0a
What are they stealing? Ideas? Thoughts?

~~~
FullyFunctional
Is this a serious question? They are stealing results of very long and
expensive R&D, commonly know as Intellectual Property, or "IP". Producing this
locally would require a sufficient mass of experience talent and lots of time
and money. It might not even be possible to catch up.

The fact that this is being stolen from Micron who presumably weren't blind to
the value of their IP make it all the more frighting. None of the companies I
have worked for in the past few decades would have had any chance of resisting
a motivated thief as locking down knowledge runs counter to fostering
innovation.

~~~
prolikewh0a
>They are stealing results of very long and expensive R&D, commonly know as
Intellectual Property, or "IP". Producing this locally would require a
sufficient mass of experience talent and lots of time and money. It might not
even be possible to catch up.

Can you tell me how stealing these results is actually a negative to society?
Is it just a negative to already extremely wealthy individuals? I'm finding no
negative here and nobody is really giving me anything other than capital.

~~~
toomuchtodo
If capital is required for innovation, and capital won't invest when that
innovation can't provide a return, it is a negative to society.

~~~
prolikewh0a
Capital is not required for innovation. See Open Source, Cuba's CimaVax, the
Soviet space program.

~~~
hueving
The Soviet space program is an example of an economically unsustainable
program kept alive by money being pumped in from external sources (govt tax
revenue). Capital is most certainly required to make these programs work in
order to purchase the fuel, basic materials, etc.

Open source is a good example of where innovation can work because all it
takes is people donating their time. It doesn't require $15 million of rocket
fuel and a $100 million rocket to make a commit to Linux.

Government-backed research works well when there is no immediate commercially
useful aspect (e.g. basic sciences, space exploration), but it's incredibly
bloated and slow compared to business R&D that has competition and motivation
to make discoveries.

Where are the socialist programs producing processors competitive with
Intel/AMD? Where is the socialist program producing an electric car people
want more than Teslas?

------
ngcc_hk
It is not a pros and cons style of argument that is call for. It is about
dynamics.

China has learnt from japan and india that just open up and even prosper is
not a oath to independence. It cunning do what it does, so when the population
age and the money war started it still goes a substantiable “empire”. After
all it is a Hans empire of the Middle Kingdom.

Now, the partnership and getting ip is not new. Look at the airplane
espeically military one you sense they have a long plan. Just America does
not. And it is just awaking.

To be honest if china is a democracy and basic human rights (which may destroy
the communist but may be a even greater power), it is another japan and Eu
raise up vs American scenario. And china learn those two lessons. And hence it
may win. It Open to get and close up key part so that yours are mine and Mine
mine. Some part like e-wall, e-market etc. are closed. They have certain
market segment (antibiotics, rare metal) and some weakness like argiculture
(too many mouth - 1/4 population ; not sure how this play out) and oil (but
shift to electricity like car and if wind/solar/nuclear/... work it can be
mediated)

But it does not have democracy and human rights. Cannot be on its side. But
what if it has.

We are all Hans or we can have a Tripolar world - right wing America, middle
Eu and left wing china for anyone to choose. But we are not. And the Hans may
want a empire of the world. We live in a sphere and middle meant nothing and a
Middle Kingdom means conquering the world.

~~~
ambicapter
This comment is borderline nonsensical. Please don't post comments via google
translate.

