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Comment by cwhiz | Hacker News Reader

They haven’t directly done that, but what they have done is force American companies to form joint ventures with a Chinese company in order to operate in China.

This requires the American company to hand over intellectual property and trade secrets. And then, amazingly, some state funded competitor comes along doing the same thing the American company wants to do.

Would a Chinese company have this same problem entering America??? No.

We need to treat China the exact way they treat us. The entire western world.

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No one is forcing companies to do joint ventures. These companies have the option to refuse and not operate in China. Are countries not allowed to impose restrictions on foreign companies?

What is being proposed here is to treat China, and Chinese companies, the exact same way as American companies are treated in China. So, yes, countries are free to have whatever restrictions they want. But we, the western world, must not allow China to abuse our open markets while shielding their markets.

I have no problem with this. Though US' strength has always been insidiously entering foreign markets and forcing developing countries to be dependent on US tech (e.g India, EU, GB). The more US decouples from China in terms of tech, the more incentive you are giving China to be tech independent and thus, be free of US hegemony.

And these Chinese companies have the option of refusing to operate in the rest of the world.

It sounds like you don't have a problem.

So now the US represents the rest of the world? Let me know when the rest of the world bans wechat and tiktok

I'll be sure to keep you posted.

You need evidence to support your claim that they are 'required' to hand over intellectual property. Joint ventures are formed based on terms and contracts, signing such contracts is a very silly move.

Also, the use of 'hand over' suggests they are all the way not willing to disclose the intellectual property but were forced to, but isn't there a patent system in China? Why would these companies refuse to disclose some intellectual property and make use the legal system, just as how they did it back home?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/forced-tech-transfers-are-on-th...

This isn't a new thing. It's been going on for decades. Huawei is a stolen corporation that would not exist if not for theft of technology, intellectual property, and trade secrets. It would further not exist if the Chinese market were as open as the American market and Huawei was forced to compete on a level playing field domestically.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19959473

These companies are after profit, so they chose to go to China to earn that profit. And for that profit, at some point in time, they must have deemed acceptable to give up something in exchange. Isn't this what trading is all about? Now somebody regrets they shouldn't have made certain choice, so they blame it on the other government? Be an adult.

Except it wasn't entirely their choice (to give up their IP).

Most of the companies when those joint ventures were setup were promised or told that their intellectual property was secure. It was then stolen and they were left with regret. Companies which refused to take that risk were compromised by Chinese actors and had their IP taken by force.

For many years the US has had to stop IP theft from China: (example: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-charges-five-chinese-milit...) and this is simply a cumulation of those efforts.

The blame on China is more than fair.

If you are talking about the military, hey, doesn't NSA spy on everybody on this planet? Or didn't Crypto AG spy on every client, even on the Germans, who are allies?

There is a marked difference between intelligence collection and economic espionage.

In the US, economic espionage is illegal and has been for some time, with legislation reinforcing that rule (such as the Economic Espionage act of 1996). If I as a private company engage in economic espionage I am liable to get prosecuted and may get time in prison. The same does not apply to companies in China, where economic espionage of a competitor is not only tolerated but encouraged.

The above linked suit was against individuals for economic espionage and not intelligence collection.

Both are stealing, why is one better than the other?

Stop moving the goalposts. First you asked for evidence they had to hand over trade secrets and IP and now you're saying "so that's just part of trading". You are not being an adult here with your argument.

Well I am being an adult because I am saying that that kind of whining in that article is simply not-being-an-adult.

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