China and Russia are here to stay. The US and the EU needs to make sure that our companies can fairly compete on their markets.
*: figures measured in russia-ostracizing western funny money
I'm pretty sure that's scale-invariant.
Russia has repeatedly claimed this is the reason they're an economic backwater, but they're also an economic backwater in any other currency.
if you are not the country printing the currency, you are at a disadvantage...
People from ex-USSR countries do however seem generally have strong math and science skills, and (for some reason) many women end up in software engineering. Western countries can probably learn something from that.
I would assume Swiss and Luxembourg based banks these days have a lot more clients from ex-ussr countries than say the US and EU countries, because there is greater risk of confiscation (in different ways) of assets in those countries.
If you managed to somehow (honestly) make $50m in Russia, would you really keep it in Russia? I think the answer is probably no.
But what do you know!
Even China itself seems to think pairing up with Russia for economic development is a good idea..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRICS#New_Development_Bank
Gee I wonder why some of these countries are portrayed negatively or suspiciously in the west..
"The CRA is generally seen as a competitor to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and along with the New Development Bank is viewed as an example of increasing South-South cooperation."
Otherwise, you have a great chance to overwhelm me with a barrage of easy to find counterexamples of Russian ingenious technological innovations and breakthroughs in the last 20 years. Extra points if it's not some weapons system based on 1970s Soviet platform.
excuse me if i'm confused about who is 'tiptoing'
US was still launching satellites in Kazakhstan, last I checked...
Note that South Africa also put up $10B, and isn't even remotely considered a world economic superpower.
Russia's GDP is $1.28T. That makes them the second-smallest of those four countries, with only South Africa being smaller.
Korolev, the champion of Soviet space programme, has died because the doctors could not ventilate his lungs. His jaw, intricately broken by NKVD interrogators in 1930s, blocked the pathway. The Soviet space programme limped ever since.
Names, leaders and technologies change, but certain things there are self perpetuating.
Yes, from our perspective, they should ease those laws. From their perspective, there is no disadvantage to them in keeping them in place as long as it is possible. It would literally take international pressure similar to the Eight-Nation Alliance, Boxer War, and "century of humiliation" to temporarily stop China from favoring domestic companies with operating restrictions and to stop sweeping it under the rug whenever those companies blatantly cheat, steal from, and infringe upon the imaginary property of foreigners and foreign corporations.
The existing Chinese government sees international trade partners as resources to be exploited for the benefit of China (and also its government officials, naturally).
Foreign companies are cutting their own throats to try to access the billion people of the Chinese domestic marketplace, and the Chinese companies are catching the blood and making sausages from it. People are going in with Adam Smith in mind, and getting Sun Tzu in response.
Facebook should not be operating in China. It shouldn't even be wanting to operate in China. It either gets eaten by Tencent directly, or Tencent copies every last byte of technology Facebook deploys in China, then the government tweaks their Firewall to block Facebook long enough for people to switch to the copy, and Facebook can no longer compete.
If you are not Chinese, there is no long-term future for your business in China. And in China, that is considered virtuous governance. In the west, fair and non-discriminatory dealings are considered virtuous, but China is not the west. They have been their own thing for thousands of years, and their thing is not your thing.
You can make money in China in the short term, but the only way to continue that into the long term is to viciously protect the secrets of your competitive advantage. Patents, copyrights, and trademarks won't help you. Well written contracts won't save you. The only reasonable way to operate in China is to keep all the critical elements of your operation somewhere else. Never give a Chinese company your source code or engineering documents, unless you want to see your work in a competitor's products.
If you want to work with all those brilliant Chinese people, make it easier for entire families to emigrate to your country. As long as they remain in PRC jurisdiction, or have significant ties back to people remaining in it, they will never truly be working for you, or even with you.