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Comment by tharne | Hacker News Reader

> It's hard to feel too sorry for these companies. It's not exactly a secret that this is how China operates and has operated for a very long time.

I see this as a win-win. These U.S. companies tried to take shortcuts by outsourcing to China and they got burned. China engaged in all sorts of unethical and illegal behavior in the process and will (hopefully) get burned.

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I see this as a win-win, too, but in a different way.

Early on, the US companies cut their costs: good for them, and likely their customers. In the long term, China developed the expertise needed to contribute to the development of advanced technologies: good for them, and for humanity's aggregate progress.

There's a lot of acrimony over how to divide the surplus, but this shouldn't overshadow the technological and economic development happening before our very eyes.

>> China developed the expertise needed to contribute to the development of advanced technologies: good for them, and for humanity's aggregate progress.

Depends how China uses the technology. More censorship wouldn't be that good for humanity.

Its wonderful that we can now reap the harvest of pervasive surveillance for pennies.

I love the fact that the PEOPLE of China have been able to benefit economically from this. However, less than 9% of China's population are members of the CCP. The other 91% of China's people are locked out of any form of government representation.

This is a recipe for tyranny, and the elites of the CCP have oppressed the good citizens of China by developing tech for suppression of speech, identification and targeting of dissent, etc. Even worse, they have begun exporting this technology to other autocracies.

I say this as somebody who has no illusions about the corrupt nature of the US government. However, the US government doesn't have nearly the power over its citizens that the CCP has. Just wanted to clarify that I'm not pretending I live in a perfect democracy. Just empathizing with the Chinese people, and wishing they had more say over their situation than they do now.

> However, less than 9% of China's population are members of the CCP. The other 91% of China's people are locked out of any form of government representation.

I wonder, of the 91% who aren’t party members, what percentage are non-members because they don’t want to join the party, versus what percentage wouldn’t be allowed to join even if they wanted to?

>>I wonder, of the 91% who aren’t party members, what percentage are non-members because they don’t want to join the party, versus what percentage wouldn’t be allowed to join even if they wanted to?

In another country, there's was no "I don’t want to join the party" when invited, just relatives with bad reputations as far as the party was concerned so no invitation. In that case, even if you were applied, you'd be refused. Think for a second, you not wanting to join the party? Granted, China in 2020 is different from Eastern Europe in the 1960-1980's but the idea is probably the same.

However, probably 95% join to enjoy the perks.

Reminds me that in Singapore, if the Party is interested in you, the common euphemism is that they 'would like to have tea' with you.

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/pap-casting-net-wide-...

>However, less than 9% of China's population are members of the CCP. The other 91% of China's people are locked out of any form of government representation.

I wonder how this form of representation is distributed. In a democracy, theoretically everyone is represented equally. In the CCP, how much say do the lowest members have? Are they yes men all the way up?

Do you believe that the Chinese people would not have benefitted, had the alleged activities not occurred? If so, then they are a sort of state-level robin-hood. If not, then the theft was greed and treachery.

I have no reason to believe that this was necessary for progress.

Had the alleged activities not occurred? Without a doubt the Chines people wound not have benefited as much.

> I have no reason to believe that this was necessary for progress.

What are the reason that you believe that this is not necessary for progress?

There doesn't exist a single example of technologically advanced country that did not jump start its technological development by using protectionist policies and/or knowledge transfer. Be that knowledge transfer legal or illegal.

And the illegal instances, when discovered, should be punished.

I guess I dont buy the argument that China and Chinese citizens would not have benefitted from legal transfer of knowledge and providing a useful service to the world exporting mineral wealth, importing food, oil, and tech, creating supply chain expertise to be cooperative partners in worldwide manufacturing booms, and paying experts to relocate (above board!) to China to teach the next generation.

This is 95% of what they are doing anyway. Its the remaining 5% of theft and espionage that is fair game for prosecution.

I guess I dont understand the apologists who think we should eschew legal action against the 5% just because "everyone does it".

The other 91% mostly don't have enough interest to become CCP member. It's not that difficult if they want to join.

Moreover, the highest organ of the state is National People's Congress (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_People%27s_Congress), with elected representatives coming from all kinds of professions, including CCP and non-CCP members. The idea is exactly to give everyone representation in government.

Nah it's very difficult for normal people to join CCP. Firstly you had to be "A Pioneer" worker/soldier etc..This usually means that you need someone' apply from CCP. As a student, you have had to be a member of the Communist Youth League of China and do a lot of pieces of shit to get your teacher‘s apply. Then you will be an "Activist" allow you to send the join offer. This is difficult enough but usually only one or two of the dozens can join the CCP.

https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1002438/party-people-what-kin...

total nonsense. they even agreed to let billionaires such as Jack Ma to join their COMMUNIST PARTY. how hard will it be for an average person to join the party? I have not heard anyone who failed to become a CCP member.

for the mentioned "Communist Youth League of China" thing, 95%+ of the suitable age group are members. you need to do something really naughty to avoid becoming one.

Almost only those who dropped out of school are NOT member of the Youth League (rare cases are you went abroad for middle school or completely freak). Joining CCP at high school is an achievement and you might get bonus or a medal even, but at college/work it’s quite easy

> good for them, and for humanity's aggregate progress.

I don't think social credit and proof that democracy isn't necessary for profit is good for humanity's progress.

Well, yes, that's what the whole cyberpunk genre has been warning us about for last 30 years. That future has come, though fortunately it's not evenly distributed, at least yet.

Not sure about the "fortunately" bit. It's nice that the dystopia hasn't captured everything yet, but uneven distribution of technological power is kinda what reinforces the dystopia.

Maybe with a social credit system the US wouldn't have elected Trump. /s

The irony of this comment is that this intellectual property theft is what America did in the 1700-1800s to get ahead.

And America eventually eclipsed the British that they were stealing from, so don't expect China to be "punished" too much.

And the Japanese after in the 19th C

Maybe there's a difference from wholesale copying of blueprints, design docs, and millions of lines of software, and someone remembering how things work and going somewhere else.

No, read about it if you want.

Yours really is another ironic comment.

The British at least tried to stop it by making it illegal to take the machines out of the country

The Americans sent the machines to China themselves to save a few bucks on labor.

I have "read about it", and nothing I read has seemed to justify China's wholesale tech stealing extravaganza.

Modern export restrictions are akin to making it illegal to take machines out of a country.

Even if it was somehow exactly the same thing happening, saying "you did this 200 years ago so I'm going to do the same thing now" isn't any kind of acceptable reasoning. Mauritania can't say that they are cool to have slaves because America had slaves 170 years ago. Or rather, they can say that, it just isn't very convincing.

Is it really stealing? It's ideas, it's not a human right. America has MADE it illegal, forced it through with their trade deals. Enforced anti-free trade copyright and ip ideals on everyone else to try and protect their advantage. One rule for them, 'free' trade for everyone else apart from knowledge, of course. One rule that they themselves ignored in their ascendancy, using those same 'illegal' means China uses.

It's just history repeating itself, delude yourself however you want that Amrrica holds some moral high ground by holding life improving knowledge to ransom.

I'm no China fan, but Inthis defending America is pathetic.

Isn't this exactly why the US should be worried?

And how everyone developed their own nukes... the moral of the story is that if someone copied your product and can beat you, then your product is not defensible in the first place.

The allegation is not copying, the allegation is fraudulent agreements with US companies, and dishonest corporate espionage.

Can anyone really develop new technology, bring it to market, have it immediately brought by a competitor with zero R&D investment, and expect to compete? Is there something that is supposed to be magical about US technology that this scenario does not apply?

The articles cites some of the examples as "taking a photo of a disassembled circuit board" and "copying source code."

While I agree copying source code is bad, but doing so and maintaining someone else's code is a monumental task.

I think design, prototyping, commercialization, and iterations are a bigger task than maintaining an active product line. It's not 100% of the work when you can simply copy someone's work, but it might be 80%

Everyone except the United States, who figured out how to build them first.

Then use the car industry as an example: the American car manufacturers' internal combustion engines looks identical to those of the the Germans.

To quote you: "who figured out how to build them first."

In the Toyota factory museum in Japan they aren’t exactly ashamed of the fact that they bought, disassembled, and reverse engineered a Chrysler for their first few cars.

That's the opposite of espionage. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Reverse engineering is a legal form of IP imitation everywhere.

Isn't some engineer opening up a box and taking pictures something mentioned in this indictment?

That was one of the simpler ones. They are also alleged to have stolen router firmware. But frankly if you've ever tried to just "take over" even an open source project it's not a trivial task to just take someone's source code and be able to master it.

In fact it's a standard open source business model to make money off the expertise on the open source code base.

Indeed, but it’s not the Japanese whining all day and all night about how the Chinese are stealing their precious gifts to the world. :)

The amount of invention and technological achievement developed in and by the US I would guess be an order of magnitude higher (at least, maybe 3) then any amount intellectual property theft from other nations in the 17-1800s.

I would not guess this to be true of China nor likely to become true for a very long time at least.

It's actually vastly accelerated this time around, China are already overtaking America as experts in certain fields.

Because the Americans so helpfully moved all their manufacturing to China, they had to teach manufacturing and engineering to their Chinese workers to troubleshoot problems, and are now losing that ability themselves.

Turns out when you're designing a product it useful to have practical manufacturing experience, which the Americans have lost.

Isn't this a lose-lose situation instead?

I think they mean win-win because they are giving the impression that these companies are not doing the right thing so for them to fail by trying this sets the precedent for others. Then since China loses the US may benefit from this

" These U.S. companies tried to take shortcuts by outsourcing to China "

It what universe is it a 'shortcut' to manufacture in another country where there are tons of people looking for jobs, wherein, by the way, said jobs will fundamentally improve the lives of millions, and in most cases, manufacturing such products in the US would not be viable anyhow.

There is no 'win win' - China is blatantly cheating, and that's basically the story.

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