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Comment by vkou | Hacker News Reader

> Just by reading Chinese news reports and textbooks, you will find there are lots of Chinese nationalist stories about their hero technician / scientists steal western technologies. They are literally proud of it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Slater

> He memorized the designs of textile factory machinery as an apprentice to a pioneer in the British industry before migrating to the United States at the age of 21. He designed the first textile mills in the US and later went into business for himself, developing a family business with his sons.

Slater memorized these trade secrets, because any papers containing these designs would have been confiscated from him.

Consider also the brain drain, wherein educated professionals have, over the past few decades, been siphoned out of the developing world, attracted by higher remuneration in the West. This is not a dissimilar process, but it is operating in reverse.

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I don't know who you are or what your agenda is, but any sane person would argue that citing something that happened in early 1800s does not make the same thing OK in 2019.

Why not? China is ~200 years late in industrializing, mostly because of centuries of colonial plunder (And a few decades of communist misrule).

There's a very simple formula for getting your country caught up to the rest of the world. Steal as much as you can, until you pull yourself up to the level of your neighbours. Every developed nation has either done this, or piggy-backed off a bigger neighbour who has.

Just because we've already gone down this path, doesn't give us any moral high-ground for pulling the ladder up after us.

And it works, too. Look at the quality of life in China, compared to India... Or Vietnam.

It's really simple. I and many others quite enjoy the peripheral benefits of living the world's #1 economy. We're #1 because of size and productivity per capita. If another country with a larger population matched us in productivity, they would be the #1 economy and would get benefits that I and many others living in the US enjoy. One of those benefits is generally spreading democratic ideals and promoting natural rights, such as free speech, private property, etc.

Any country whose values contradict those values threatens me if they become the most economically powerful country. With this in mind, it's imperative that we pull up the ladder behind us if we want to maintain the lead that protects our values.

If/When China gets the lead, you can be certain that they'll pull up the ladder behind them, leaving us in a position of dependency.

I don't care if some podunk country does this. I do care if a country the size of China does this because my life is better so long as I'm on the winning team.

A big difference between the US and China, is that any foreigner can move to the US to contribute to and enjoy the benefits of being #1. If China becomes #1, that option won't be available in practical terms, because China is essentially a homogenous ethnostate with an almost impossibly difficult path to naturalization for those that were not born there.

> any foreigner can move to the US to contribute to and enjoy the benefits of being #1

This is not true. There's, at a minimum, hundreds of millions of people who'd like to move here and can't.

I had no problem moving here. I've compared both countries and it's orders of magnitudes easier to move to the US and becoming a permanent resident or citizen in the US than China.

One of those benefits is generally spreading democratic ideals and promoting natural rights, such as free speech, private property, etc.

I think your view of the last 50 years of American intervention in other countries is not based in fact. The U.S. has consistently subverted democratic principles. We’ve done this in Central America, Iran in the 1950s, Haiti, South Vietnam, South Africa, Cambodia, etc. The U.S. government frequently promotes regimes that are antithetical to the promotion of natural rights and democratic ideals.

It’s fine to want the U.S. to be number 1 and to want to prevent China from becoming number 1 but one should not believe that the U.S. has been anything other than a self interested hegemon the last 50 years.

"Any country whose values contradict those values threatens me if they become the most economically powerful country. With this in mind, it's imperative that we pull up the ladder behind us if we want to maintain the lead that protects our values."

You are funny. Nobody in the rest of the world cares how you live and what values you have. At least until you begin spreading your way of live and values through bombing.

You seem to be unaware of the economic literature on trade. Without a doubt, trade barriers harm the public, regardless of which government initiated them (or reciprocates them).

The rest of your post recites the American Exceptionalist narrative, which a lot of people believe in like a religion (not saying you do).

But what evidence would it take to change your view? What if the main purpose of intelligence agencies was to conduct industrial espionage on behalf of US firms? What if government intervention in trade (forbidding private firms and individuals from free choice) was making the US worse off every year? What if China’s leaders are significantly more wise and judicious than our own? What if China’s people are actually more aligned with enlightenment values than most Americans?

The values you mention are found only in political speeches and propaganda messages. The US is the biggest state sponsor of terrorism worldwide, the biggest threat to peace, the biggest danger to our natural resources, and the most egregious violator of human rights in many many years.

Our leaders try to instill fear and skepticism about foreigners, but most Americans have much much more in common with the average Chinese person than we do with our own leaders.

I wasn't born in the US and I haven't lived my entire adult life in the US. The US, Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand all can claim exceptionalism in my book due to the high quality of life they've achieved for their people, whether you were born in these countries or moved to them.

I'm also not claiming the US is perfect. No country is. It's a lot better than many of the other 190 other options out there in many respects, but not all.

> most Americans have much much more in common with the average Chinese person than we do with our own leaders.

Completely agree. I'm not criticizing the average Chinese person and I agree that average Americans and average Chinese have a lot in common. My post wasn't about average people. It was about which leaders I trust more. I'm criticizing the leaders of China versus US leaders. I chose to live here because I trust these leaders the most, but I recognize they aren't perfect.

I wouldn't mind if the other countries I listed above become #1 because I generally trust the leaders of those countries as well. I don't think it's a controversial opinion by any stretch to look at some countries and think "Gee, I sure don't want them to have global power".

> And it works, too. Look at the quality of life in China, compared to India... Or Vietnam.

Can't say for Vietnam as I don't know much, but quality of life in India is much much better than quality of life in China.

People in India have access to full Internet, have access to real Democracy, have freedom of speech, live free life, aren't afraid to speak their mind, minorities are not being thrown in concentration camps, Government has no control over their thoughts and so and so forth. Sure, they may not have as many life's luxuries, but I think most people will take a free-er life than a gilded prison.

Ten years behind in life expectancy, five times behind in GDP, despite starting from a similar economic footing in 1948... Except China had to deal with five decades of communist misrule, three of which were under the leadership of, well, Mao Zedong.

This isn't a 'Oh, China enjoys a few more luxuries then India'. Today, there are three hundred million people in China that are living nearly-western lifestyles, whereas twenty years ago, there weren't any.

There's nearly an order of magnitude in the difference of development, between the two countries.

Don't get me wrong - India has made a lot of great achievements over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. But if you were to ask - which approach to trade brings prosperity - the winner is pretty clear.

"Sure, they may not have as many life's luxuries, but I think most people will take a free-er life than a gilded prison."

I'd bet you have never starved in your life or found yourself sick without adequate medical help.

> but quality of life in India is much much better than quality of life in China

Just no.

> People in India have access to full Internet

Internet penetration in India is 25% compared to China's 71%. I suspect most people would take censored internet over no internet[0].

> have access to real Democracy

I suspect this is one of those hierarchy of needs things. India. India has 21% of its population living on under $1.90 a day, where China has 0.7% the same. Perhaps they can eat their ballot papers?[1]

> have freedom of speech, live free life, aren't afraid to speak their mind

Really though? "[India] ranks poorly at 138th rank out of 180 listed countries in the Press Freedom Index 2018 released by Reporters Without Borders (RWB)". That's _terrible_ for a supposed Democracy, even if China is worse. At least their censorship is out in the open...[2]

> minorities are not being thrown in concentration camps

No, they're just being killed with mob violence instead[3][4]

> Sure, they may not have as many life's luxuries, but I think most people will take a free-er life than a gilded prison.

I think you've not met many hungry people.

[0] http://www.pewglobal.org/2018/06/19/social-media-use-continu...

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty

[2] https://rsf.org/en/ranking/2018

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_violence_in_India#Mo...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste-related_violence_in_Indi...

Most people would take Full Internet. That is why almost all other countries have the full internet.

> most people will take a free-er life than a gilded prison

Maslow's hierarchy applies here. I won't start worrying about freedom of speech till I have food and stability. The fact that so many non-democratic countries transition to becoming democracies only after reaching some level of economic development (see Taiwan, South Korea) would imply that this is a trend in the world.

>And it works, too. Look at the quality of life in China, compared to India... Or Vietnam.

You're basically saying crime pays if you can get away with it. Everybody knows this, the thing is that eventually you can't get away with it anymore, which is what China is learning now as their economy gets crushed by tariffs and the world unites against them

Please make your arguments on HN without making dark insinuations about agendas.

Also, please drop name-calling language like "any sane person".

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Agreed. Mea culpa!

There wasn't a WTO and there weren't international trades laws, in the 1800s. Even then he wasn't working as an arm of the US government to deliberately steal IP to surpass the British empire technologically, which is what the Chinese are currently doing

> There wasn't a WTO and there weren't international trades laws, in the 1800s.

No, but what he was doing was still highly illegal.

Could you quote the relevant law from 18th century England that he broke?

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