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Comment by jarfil | Hacker News Reader

It's kind of funny to speak of "stealing tech" when it's the foreign companies themselves who give Chinese manufacturers all that's needed to set up production lines to make the tech. Like, what did you expect, that they wouldn't run third shifts or sell the stuff to whoever paid them for it?

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Yes, in most cases, foreign companies are REQUIRED to either transfer their tech or have a domestic partnership as a pre-condition to do business in China (ie, access to domestic market in China). There are a few notable exception to this rule -- Tesla is one recent exception. Samsung also has been able to set up multi-billion USD DRAM factories in China without any tech transfer in spite of the Chinese gov't ambitious plan to develop their own domestic high-tech manufacturing sector.

Samsung doesn't have any OLED manufacturing in China and never agreed to such terms before. In this particular case, we aren't just talking about Chinese companies poaching Samsung's former/retired engineers or shamelessly copying their IP. The Korean authorities in a sting operation stopped a bunch of Samsung suppliers from smuggling Samsung's advanced OLED manufacturing machineries to some unnamed Chinese company (wink wink you know who) in China at the port of departure in South Korea.

> Like, what did you expect, that they wouldn't run third shifts or sell the stuff to whoever paid them for it?

Yes. Because of those pesky things called "laws" and "trade agreements". It's still theft even if it wasn't always difficult to do.

I mean, you have a point, but it's inevitable. If a person pays you to do something, then you find out they are selling your work for an order of magnitude more than you're making, it's human nature to at least question this, at best mimic it, laws be damned.

You seem to be justifying crime because it was so easy to commit that you might as well.

Yard ornaments might be easy to steal, I mean, heck, people just leave them in their front yard over night. But it's still theft, it's still illegal, and even though the people made it easy there should still be a penalty for the theft.

I think most people would agree that idealogical theft is far different than physical theft.

Not saying I agree with said theft, but when making deals with known questionable actors, it's a bit of a given.

I agree with you to some degree. I am against the whole notion of non-compete agreement for this reason.

But in this particular case with Samsung's OLED, Chinese companies are not only accused of poaching their former/retired employees or stealing (or learning) know-how's or IP, but also smuggling their high-tech manufacturing machinaries out of Samsung suppliers' plants in South Korea to China outright.

Just because someone is a better salesman than you doesn't give you the right to break the law what kind of insane rational is that

Exactly. I have a hard time feeling sympathy for any company that outsourced everything to a foreign nation, then get ripped off by said nation. Were the few points in stock price worth it?

Yes, very much so to the generations of Western executives who have made these decisions over the last 25 years.

i think what happened in samsung's case was an employee stole the blueprints and sold them to china.

That's been going for some time. This case was unique in that the Korean authority caught some rogue Samsung suppliers smuggling Samsung's high-tech OLED manufacturing machinaries their factories in South Korea to China.

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