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Comment by Brain_Thief | Hacker News Reader

I've read your comment several times and am having trouble understanding your underlying point - could you elaborate?

It's a common apologia tactic for authoritarian regimes, in which their authoritarianism is justified by saying that, actually, that particular ethnicity prefers to be ruled by an iron-fisted dictatorship.

Basically, the structure and ideology of the regime is assumed to be the authentic expression of something inherent in that particular culture, rather than the product of material circumstances or deliberate choices by a political elite.

Chinese culture encourages sharing ideas, not copyrighting ownership. Some things I've read say it comes from Confucianism. Regardless, they think it's good to spread and remix existing ideas instead of giving one party exclusive rights for 20-100+ years for their own profit. I agree with them that sharing ideas and tech seems to be a better default. If we had protections, they should be much more selective and careful.

In Shenzhen especially, you have to out-compete the others on implementation of ideas instead of rest on your laurels (err, copyrights and patents). Wired has a great documentary of its history and culture here with examples:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGJ5cZnoodY

One I like that's about improvement more than stealing is the iPhone copy. That company got the copy out about a year before the iPhone hit China. Apple refused to let customers swap their batteries and SIM cards easily. Their I.P. protections let them pull bullshit like that. The Chinese knockoff did let you swap those. The chargers come to mind, too. If your interface is proprietary, a company will likely spring up offering a modified product or cheaper adapter that lets people keep their existing one.

I'm not so sure this is actually a cultural thing and not a convenience given the times thing.

The Chinese education system seems to emphasize that many "Chinese" ideas were stolen by "foreigners"in previous generations. This hardly seems to jibe with the claims of merely cultural understandings of ownership.

China's technological contributions to the 20th century were next to nill. It's easy to share when it means playing with everyone else's toys.

Except the communist party which controls all of China, and takes a highly authoritarian stance on the free spread of information they dislike and fear of course. They have a literal and digital Great Wall, I’m not sure how your square this fact with what you’re claiming is a cultural bias to collective information policies.

"Except the communist party which controls all of China, and takes a highly authoritarian stance on the free spread of information they dislike and fear of course. "

They don't dislike foreign I.P. that their businesses can use to get rich. They also don't seem to dislike what Shenzhen is doing since they're not throwing the copycats in jail. It looks like the communist party is fine with this concept.

Controlling information they fear to stay in power is a different topic entirely. They're all about that. That's why they have the Wall, censhorship, etc. You also seem to be conflating what Chinese individuals and businesses will do if they aren't restricted vs what their government imposes on them. The culture I'm describing applies to the former. I have no idea how the latter thinks past preserving and expanding their power.

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