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Comment by foodislove | Hacker News Reader

Protectionism with Chinese Characteristics

It's a pretty common tactic. Cite "national security" or any other vaguely plausible reason to deny access to non-favored firms (foreign companies, and local companies who don't have the "connections"). If anyone complains, government spokesperson and 50 cent mafia generate lots of angry nationalistic crying. If another country retaliates, same spokesperson and 50 cent mafia will then decry with a straight face how hypocritical "democracies" are and how great Xi Jinping is.

The game plan is simple. Buy and/or steal tech. Rebadge as Chinese, then bankrupt the original creators by leveraging government subsidies and underpaid workers ie Segway.

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One can question their methods. Still why should they let foreign companies map their country? Technology and information assets like everything else. They might be the natural resources of the 21st century. And a lot of countries might be giving up their chance of becoming the next Norway without even knowing it.

I kind of agree. Whether or not you disagree with their strategy of blocking foreign tech companies, it's lead to an explosion of major chinese tech companies.

Europe doesn't have a Google, Facebook, or Amazon, because the major US companies got there early enough to dominate the entire market. I wouldn't necessarily say that that's a good result for those countries.

Look, I'm not saying you are a paid shill, but 2 cents worth of thinking would lead you to the truth:

Any self-driving car can map out your roads. Saying "no road mapping for your [future] self driving cars" is silly. It could be boiled down to "no camera borne cars" which necessitates no self-driving cars.

And if they don't want our self-driving cars I don't want theirs.

I don't see how it silly. Autonomous cars are going to be a game of information. I don't think it is in any nations interest to give that information away. If autonomous cars, artificial intelligence or any other technology is going to be as big as people say (or even just as big as computers, software and information is these days) then it's going to be a large part of the future wealth of a nation. Just like oil or even regular car manufacturing is today.

Also I think you severely overestimate the subtlety of Chinese propaganda.

> And if they don't want our self-driving cars I don't want theirs.

Not about this particular example but we know that’s not how it works; people buy whatever is cheap so not wanting something on invidual level works if you are strong and willing to spend 2-3-4-n x the money, but in general people will just buy. In the 80s many people said it about Japanese cars and yet everyone bought them eventually because cheap and good. Even in China, where many people have the old hate against Japan (far stronger than your feelings most likely as the Japenese did horrible things here), they still drive Toyota etc and they see the issue with that but it’s cheaper than German and better than Chinese, so what can you do.

US and EU have in the past blocked several Chinese companies (ZTE, Huawei, etc) for national security reasons as well. Would you classify them as protectionism?

If yes, then why are you complaining? If not, then why are you applying double standards here?

Why not judge the concerns on their own merit?

Blocking a chip or other technology that's hard to vet is one thing.

Blocking mapping when the same is already accessible from space via spy and public satellites? Does not really makes sense.

Now, of course these cases can and should be compared, but so far it seems that citing national security issues in one case seems to be pretty baseless excuse, whereas in the other case it seems to have some merit, even if the actual ban of Chinese sourced components is ridiculous, because a lot of other things are sourced/imported from China with the same or more severe espionage potential.

> Blocking mapping when the same is already accessible from space via spy and public satellites? Does not really makes sense.

Then no one needs to map the road anyway, why bother?

The satellites don't provide enough information for self driving cars while they do provide enough information to be what China is considering a national security concern.

You're citing firms who have direct ties to the government. I would expect China to also block Lockheed Martin from acquiring Chengdu Aerospace - and nobody would bat an eye.

What the US government HASN'T done is say "sorry ZTE, you can't sell ANY phones in the US because national security". There's a very, very big difference.

Well, at least US/EU allow Chinese companies to create local companies operating internet services in their regions without insisting on a locally-owned "joint venture" with a local company owning the majority of the company.

I think the US/EU should retaliate on this particular policy for China specifically. This is way overdue.

You probably shouldn't cite Huawei, who was found guilty of outright theft of Cisco technology and software (literally copied it down to the bugs--it's how Cisco proved their case) when you are trying to cite examples of "victims" of protectionism.

Huawei are the poster child case you cite in favor of protecting your domestic companies.

China is responsible for the largest theft and transfer of wealth in the history of the world. They have stolen trade secrets, ignored IP and copied everything they possibly could and can all at the expense of Western Tax Payers who funded a century of research and development.

All Western companies with offices and factories in China have been compromised. From their financial records to trade secrets, all have been stolen by the Chinese.

In the late 90's my employer (leading technology company) implemented an IDS. We were stunned at the amount of internal attack activity aimed at our Accounting, HR and Research areas of the company all coming from our Chinese office and Factory. It had been completely infiltrated by Chinese military at every level.

I think you're underestimating the transfer of wealth caused by colonialism.

I don't think you understand the Chinese are not done with us yet.

oh, you were talking about a hypothetical future. Never mind then.

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