To be honest, the way you put ut, the story feels OK to me.
There are many truly bad examples, e.g. the arm china story, but engineers doing their thing is not one of them.
This is engineers deliberately taking tech to somewhere where they know IP laws won't be enforced.
It's not like I'm saying they can learn calculus here and then go to China and use calculus to design things.
It's that I'm saying they design a very specific thing, a very specific way, for hire, then go make that exact specific thing, that same specific way.
If it were in any other country but China, it wouldn't be allowed to happen.
Unless there is something explicitly stated in your contract banning you from taking the "know-how" in your brains and use it elsewhere (so long as you don't breach any patent) then it sounds there is nothing technically wrong.
I think it's a cultural thing as well, some sort of hustle culture, as the Chinese citizens that moved to NZ when I grew up loved to flout rules & laws around things like the property markets etc - one big problem was Chinese nationals buying up as much NZ baby formula & milk poweder as they could get, hiking the price & selling/sending it to China, so much that NZ experienced shortages for Kiwi mothers trying to feed their babies, so much so that supermarkets had to instate a X per person policy. When I worked in one during 1st year uni I would get literally screamed at in Mandarin by angry and aggressive Chinese nationals with trolleys full of baby formula.
And keep in mind that all of that started only because of the big scare where Chinese baby formula was found to have melamine in it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal) killing 6 babies, affecting hundreds of thousands. All because Sanlu's execs wanted more $$$ so they cut their product.
I really doubt this unless all the inputs are commoditised. Industrial espionage usually fails because if you don’t have the know how to make the tools that make the tools it’s difficult to impossible to literally copy it. Not saying what you’re saying doesn’t happen, it does, all the time. But usually the engineering is substantially different if only because different things are cheap or expensive, or just unavailable.
> If it were in any other country but China, it wouldn't be allowed to happen.
Historically, the US, Japan, Korea, Taiwan all did it. No doubt Vietnam does it now too. Not like they have an excellent civil legal system. Joys of working in developing countries.
Smart and knowledgable people in a certain field, but who are slightly stuck, can be helped by a few tiny details. If someone can provide a specific manual or piece of documentation, or just a photo copy or image of some key detail then those smart and knowledgable people can pass the hurdle and continue.
IIRC the USA did plenty of that.
I mean if that's the case the so be it, but they should expect protectionism in response - US already bans export of certain technologies to China, if we embrace the differences in views on IP theft, how are Western countries meant to protect the IP they invested money in nowadays?
Or do we just give it away for free? Who pays to develop this free IP then?
But let's not forget the greater context here.
We are talking about a communist country with very top down, state architected enterprises and actions with the USA, which is certainly not those things.
The US isn't perfect, by any means, I'm not trying to say that. Context, that's what I'm trying to have us remember here.
My original comment that started this whole thread is similar. I'm not trying to communicate any kind of opinion on it. It's just an observation of things I've personally seen happen in the world. Others are putting their own opinions on if it's right or wrong. I'm not trying to say any of that, just share my honest observations on the world.
Just because it was once legal when the world was far different doesn't justify actions today.
But I've never built the exact same castle, with the exact same Floorplan, with the exact same plans. That's what I'm highlighting that I've seen several times.
A cool aside, I love this song by Watsky called "cardboard castles". Having done this for 20 years (build "cardboard castles") I identify with it.
I worked at a large tech co with an assembly line in China and experienced this first hand. A routine scan of one of our calibration machines turned up a Trojan with a copy of all calibration software squirreled away. Fortunately nothing is network connected there, but it was obvious someone was planning to come back for it. The stash had our calibration software and the factory’s proprietary control software on it. Both companies sent security to watch the machine for 48 hours straight until a hard drive shredder could be procured to mutually assure each party no software would leak. It was nuts, but apparently common.
Just Google "Chinese protectionist" and then any industry. The Chinese government has been actively targeting everything from CNC machine tools to medical devices and semiconductors for decades. Some industries with more success than others. Anything they import, especially industrial equipment like textile looms, cnc machines, semiconductor equipment, etc. There are big, long term, well funded pushes to manufacture indigenous versions of just about everything. Airplanes, jet engines, computer chips, industrial equipment, on and on
A IP is not a 'natural' concept, most cultures do not have it. Better question might be how did IP become a cultural thing in the West?
the deal is: you can use our cheap labor force, but we can use your ideas
According to who? Sovereign states have their own laws, that's what makes them sovereign.
You claim that companies wouldn't have done business in China (in the times before our current Second Cold War) had they known about the lack of IP law enforcement there. I think companies who outsourced to China knew very well what was going on, and calculated that they'd still come out ahead.
> Sovereign states have their own laws, that's what makes them sovereign.
You're making a grossly misinformed claim here. Sovereign countries also participate outside their borders and are subject to the international agreements they participate in.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_intellectual_...
Schrodinger's executive - when things go well, it's because they meticulously planned every detail. When things go wrong, suddenly they know less about their business than my grandma does.
What is the cause of this habit of making up excuses for people that get massive compensation but never take any responsibility?
You are coming up with excuses like "well they couldn't possibly be aware of information that was widely avaliable in mass media since 2010 at least.
Would you accept this sort of excuse if someone was in charge of safekeeping your child and they took your kid for a walk through an area known for violence and murder?
Here is a better example; you trust the bank with your money, bank gets robbed. The criminals are gonna be criminals. But why is the bank vault made of cardboard, and why is the password ‘1234’? Imagine the same bank keeps getting robbed for 10 years, and they make no attempt to fix things.
Should the management still get their bonus? Should they be help to account? At some point you have to start asking if the bank management is in on the crime.
It might nit be in the contract, but they definitely know whats going on, and they still take the deal
It's not long till the capital class claims ownership of your brain too. /s
If you remove uniforms from a soccer match, you can celebrate each individual player's goal. But the team that forgets they are (or should be) playing a team game will be obliterated.