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Comment by Jerry2 | Hacker News Reader

I never understood why Western technology companies haven't taken China to a WTO tribunal for restricting their business practices. I mean, China exports trillions of dollars worth of goods to us yet when you try to export services to China, you're met with "The Golden Shield Project" aka "The Great Firewall of China". That doesn't seem like a fair deal at all.

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Tim Wu wrote a law review article on this topic in 2006: http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...

I believe the U.S. government sent a preliminary investigative letter related to this sometime around 2009, but I don't remember whether there was any follow-up. (It was understood as laying the groundwork for a potential WTO complaint.)

Edit: here is a later article arguing the same theory: http://www.ecipe.org/app/uploads/2014/12/protectionism-onlin...

You mean American tech companies. Stop playing this West vs China, It is just US.

I think your tone is overly aggressive and accusatory.

European countries have a large trade deficit with China (€170B)[1]. The U.S. had about double the amount of trade deficit ($336B), mostly due to its greater value of imports [2].

This doesn't prove that China restricts access to its markets by European companies, but it provides evidence that the situation may not be as simple as you suggest.

1. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/7553974/6-120...

2. https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/china-mongolia-taiwan/peo...

Trade deficit does not suggest anything. Whenever China tries to buy some technology, the US is so protective and at the same time buy all the clothes and low profit stuff. That is how you get the trade deficit. So it is pretty much that EU and US just keep Chinese work like slave forever. By the way, it is really just American tech companies. not a single european company's name pop up in my mind.

This is a bizarre and false statement. U.S. companies have been selling technology to Chinese companies and consumers for decades.

Routers (Cisco), farm equipment (Caterpillar), software (AutoCAD, Microsoft, Oracle, etc), medical devices (GE), factory equipment (GE), microchips (AMD, Intel, Qualcomm), high-precision measurement (Agilent/Keysight), etc.

The list is absurdly long. Your agenda is preventing you from seeing a more balanced view of things. Try to read a bit about cooperation between the two countries, such as huge foreign investment in Shenzhen, exchange programs between Chinese and American universities, success of Chinese technology firms in the U.S. (Huawei, Nexus 6P; Almost all solar panel companies; etc)

I can't bring a big European tech company to mind for any purpose not just this topic... there just hasn't been many influential consumer tech companies coming out of Europe recently that would have a big interest here. And as the article points out it's largely the consumer ones complaining here as the industry/government tech companies have already been under this level of regulatory scrutiny in the past, it's only new to consumer products.

So your argument seems to be built on a faulty premise that the two geographic industries are comparable yet one is silent... one is largely silent for another reason.

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