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Comment by devy | Hacker News Reader

> Lack of respect for IP runs deep in Chinese culture, articulated in great detail by Paul Middler in his book "What's wrong with China?". Having worked in China for a long period, there is no better summary of the Chinese business culture.

If you are reading Paul Middler's book about China, you probably don't know about China, because clearly Paul Middler doesn't know China[1].

[1]: https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2125044/book-revi...

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I was having dejavu one after another as I read through it and even more so when I read "Poorly made in China". It was by far the best (perhaps brutally honest) overview of the Chinese business culture, confirmed by other colleagues of mine who recommended this book to me.

Thanks for the link, I am gonna read about it and see what's being debated.

I know about a small western company acquired by a big Chinese multinational where Linux firmware devs are working on Windows boxes with no internet. Firewalled.

The company policy is to not allow internet on machines connected to the company network. They say that it is very typical on China for companies to try to atract workers from the competition, and these take with them not only know-how, but internal files from the company they leave too. Hence the firewalling.

It's ridiculous because I'm speaking of consumer electronics, not the military. The team morale is super low because they are fighting against the environment, not the problem they want to solve.

Maybe they only want to crash the western subsidiary and get the prestigious brand name(?). Anyways it seems that they are getting a taste of their own medicine.

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