It's almost as if you have a spin off company that can request very limited access of information from the main one.
It's a bit more expensive but definitely worth it.
However if somebody has to do business there, the point is that there are ways to minimize the damages to your company, partners or customers outside of the wall.
The best way forward as a business that must operate in China to stay competitive is to hire lots of Chinese employees and send them to the company's "Western" country of origin in hopes that they'll learn our preference for freedom of expression and privacy and take it back home with them.
China is not turning out to be a land of milk and honey for western corporations. The best business decision for a Western business with regard to China may be to give up on it, because the PRC wants your local competitor to succeed, not you.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/america-is-losing-the-chinese-s...
> The shift signals a possible end of an era. For years, it was customary for Western executives to tout their plans for dominating China—a market they felt they had to win as markets elsewhere matured. But foreign consumer brands now hold a smaller market share in the categories tracked by McKinsey & Co. than at any time since the global financial crisis, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of research from the U.S. consulting firm, incorporating data from Euromonitor and IHS Markit. Market share losses were particularly evident in categories such as pet food, passenger cars, videogames, smartphones and appliances.
> ...
> Some Western companies, including Carrefour SA, Amazon Inc. and Uber Technologies Inc., have decided China is too complex or costly to win for some of their major businesses, and have closed or sold them off after facing powerful local rivals who were able to largely control the market. Ford Motor Co. , Apple Inc. and others remain committed, but are struggling to meet expectations. Amazon said it continues to serve Chinese consumers through its cross-border e-commerce business and remains committed to China. Uber didn’t respond to requests to comment. Ford didn’t comment. Carrefour provided no further comment beyond its press release detailing the transaction.
Agreed. Which is why my advice is limited to companies who will lose to competitors if they fail to compete in Chinese markets. Any company seeking to strike out in China without a local competitor will fail because of the reasons mentioned in the article. That said, any western company trying to compete with Chinese companies will also fail.
That's naive, totally not going to happen. I find many mainland Chinese people are proud of their country's political stance and return to the mainland proud of their allegiance to their country. From their perspective, I don't blame them. Foreigners and foreign nation states have not been good to China for what is literally called the Century of Humiliation in Chinese history. Hundred years of foreign states just trampling on China, dividing it up for themselves. They have a national PTSD regarding all of it.
So ANYTHING that resembles foreigners trying to influence China's future and meddle in China's affairs is met with a united anger. I know a lot of Chinese people who did masters degrees in the US. They are completely on the mainland government's side on every significant issue.
I've seen smart and successful mainlanders also be derisive of Chinese students who go overseas to study and then get "brainwashed" by foreign education systems.
https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/05/01/students-column-us-col...
I think the above link shows some really good examples that many mainlanders do not want to consider alternative views. They are firm in what their truth is, just as westerners are firm in what their truth is. It takes a very open and dispassionate mind to be able to understand both sides and figure out why the issues are so complicated. Unfortunately, I do not see many examples of such open minds on any particular side in this debate.
Coincidentally, the opposite of my experience.
For the record, I think you've expanded my recommendation far beyond its scope. I don't think corporations are going to solve the problem in China no matter what they try. But this is my recommendation for how corporations "that must operate in China to stay competitive" should behave. It's limited to a certain audience and it's for their sole benefit.
I most certainly think China needs to be dealt with through international measures. But I also disagree that mainlanders are as willing to support China's government as you think. And like you, that's from my own personal experience. Take it as you will.
1. Not entering the Chinese market during this time of growth is a lost opportunity.
2. Chinese citizens working and living in a free country will import these values back home (false)
#1 may be true in the short-term, if you are okay with selling out your users and giving up your IP but in the long term, you are essentially investing in the rise of a totalitarian state, which does not care about fairness and individual rights and freedoms. In the long term, investing in China today is effectively chipping away at democracy for our descendants.
#2 is false because it is derived from a western frame of thought. For the majority of Chinese citizens coming to the US to study or work, they do not care about knowledge, enlightenment, or the freedoms that the western civilization values so much. They are here for the thing that their society values most - $$$. Do not think for once that the Chinese care at all about western "freedoms".
#1 may be true in the short-term, if you are okay with selling out your users and giving up your IP but in the long term, you are essentially investing in the rise of a totalitarian state, which does not care about fairness and individual rights and freedoms. In the long term, investing in China today is effectively chipping away at democracy for our descendants
What does that have to do with the point that he brought up? Of course democracy is in peril - we're all climbing a local short-term maximum only to find that it will lead us all into a global long-term minimum. But what he said isn't false. It's true. Democracy will be in peril whether it's your company that sells out to China or whether its a competitor that sells out and then out-profits you, out-competes you, and then buys you out. Its an efficient market and not going to China will lead you to the local minimum.
What we need is firm government action on the part of the US, the EU, and Japan. We need to stop feeding this monstrosity that we've nourishing in Beijing and it isn't private industry that can do it.
Their problem wasn't that they built a wall, but rather they stopped looking past it because of beliefs in their own superiority.
I mean, in the same breath of my aforementioned advice I could have added that "by the way, don't over-invest in China because the inevitable embargo of Chinese trade in the West might destroy your company."
But it's not dangerous to recommend that a business operate as a business. What is dangerous is to not have our governments intervene and to hogtie our politicians from making difficult choices when it comes to trade principles. For example, the US should have long ago forced China to recognize its patent laws. Additionally, China's human rights violations should be tried in international court regardless of its power and size (interestingly enough, so should the US's human rights violations.) I think it's all too obvious that the time has come for China to back down on its authoritarianism.
And that's what I vote for and that's what I support. But I don't think it's unreasonable to recommend a corporation act like a corporation. You seem smart enough to know this.
> For the majority of Chinese citizens coming to the US to study or work, they do not care about knowledge, enlightenment, or the freedoms that the western civilization values so much. They are here for the thing that their society values most - $$$. Do not think for once that the Chinese care at all about western "freedoms".
The problem is that they've been deliberately kept ignorant about western freedoms (and fed a fair amount of propaganda to counter them), and that the West hasn't been trying hard enough to impart understanding and spread them. The false part of #2 is that merely working or living in a place does not lead to fast assimilation of its values.
When Chinese people actually learn about liberal values, they want them and fight for them:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/01/world/asia/hong-kong-prot...
That's because no one is buying their phones in China [1]
[1] - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-samsung-elec-china/samsun...
Also, the smartphone market in China is shrinking. That's the reason for the current scramble for marketshare outside China. The market has reached saturation and the major Chinese brands are growing only at the expense of the smaller ones disappearing.
American living in Europe here, and while I realize this is a bit of a curveball I'd like to point out that it is not difficult to avoid Chinese made products. My TV is a Samsung made in Hungary, my phone made in Taiwan (I do have an old Thinkpad made in China though).
I try to avoid Chinese made products. Not because of any nationalism, but because better quality alternatives exist at nearly the same price point.
For example I have a German made fridge and it's exceptional. It is difficult to get excited about a fridge but when I disassemble the shelves and bins to clean it I notice carefully finished edges beneath cosmetic covers that most customers would never see. The plastic parts haven't gone brittle and do not crack or chip. The glass shelves are thick and heavy and tempered. There are thoughtful touches that come from superior engineering and quality raw materials. It only cost a tiny bit more than similar Chinese models and I expect it will outlast them while retaining all of its original functionality.
As an American living in America, I find it fascinating that one of the few things I agree with Trump supporters in my area about is that we should avoid Chinese goods as much as possible.
Now it's for two different reasons - theirs is because of nationalism, mine is because of build quality.
But as an example, Pony woodworking clamps used to be made in Chicago, they shut down manufacturing 15 or so years ago, and recently started remaking clamps. Remaking them in China at the world's largest clamp manufacturer. The quality is not comparable. The older, Chicago made clamps, some of mine are from the 70's, are still good to use every day. I bought a handful of the new clamps to try them out, and the finish just isn't there. They're just shoddy compared to the older versions. I certainly don't see them lasting 40-50 years with constant use.
Flagship, image making products like Apple Iphones are made with some level of in-house involvement, but even they were cookie cutter products based on Samsung reference design up until 3gs.
I myself once worked for a company doing sourcing for a company that did sourcing for Amazon when they were just started venturing into hardware with Kindel. Any such project is at least 50% external input, otherwise they simply don't have an ability to pull it out for the lack of hands on industry expertise.
My guess is that many will try to ignore that law and just assume that the government isn't looking or that it is bound by local law not to give trade secrets to competitors and so on. Of course that's not worth a lot, but ...
Broadly speaking, I don't know why software is singled out in its economics. Creating software takes time of people. Time costs money, and much more of that when it comes to highly skilled engineers. The fact software has virtually no replication costs does not change the fact that its engineering is as expensive if not more so than engineering of other goods.
GitLab is open core, not open source: "We ship GitLab CE which is open source and GitLab EE that is closed source." from https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2016/07/20/gitlab-is-open-core...
(As an unrelated aside, given the number of people on HN that mistakenly think GitLab is open source, I'd say that "open core" as a marketing tactic has a real chance of becoming widespread in the future.)
> presumably is already collecting the same information
Do you have any evidence at all?
What the fuck are you actually talking about anyway? I'm a FOSS guy too but there's no way we should force it on everyone. If I want to write some code and not make the source available, why should you be able to dictate otherwise?
There's probably thousands of edge cases to your over simplistic thinking.