Comment by pipio21 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pipio21 | Hacker News Reader

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China is doing what any country should do. It is not extortion, there is no blackmail here. Foreigners want to be part of the Chinese market? let's make a deal.

Nobody forces you to accept this. I say this as a European that actually worked some years in China. I was extremely privileged as engineer and manager as I was making China wealthier.

That is not different than Britain hiring the best engineers of the Netherlands(where industrial revolution started) and giving them a good life if they improved the country, until they did not need them anymore of course.

The USA did the same thing later with Britain, pirating their industrial machinery, even as it was punished with death.

Nor any different from the USA accepting Einstein, von Braun, Sergey Brin, or Elon Musk and giving them the opportunities they lacked in their original places.

But in China it is not so much about "secrets" but culture, West culture has evolved from 500 years of extreme changes thanks to Gutenberg press.

If you read "The prince" Machiavelli says extreme changes are happening today(in 16th century). Napoleon reads it and say:those changes are nothing compared with those happening today(in 19th century).

When you live in China you realize all those accumulated changes were not done at all, as culture was very well controlled so the masses could not access to it. So a revolution happened but inner change of the culture takes time.

You say China improving is terrifying. What is terrifying for me that is the extreme differences in poverty in the world. People in poor countries like China are hungry to get out of poverty while people in the west feel entitled to wealth even when the only thing they have done is being born privileged.

I travel to Africa frequently as a reminder of all how rich we are and giving value to things we ignore as we take for granted.

Leaving history aside (do we really want to apply 16th century economics rules today? No) your statement that any country would do the same thing is untrue in many ways. There are IP laws that protect a comoany's right to keep its secrets and extract value out of them for a number of years. That's a bit too long in some cases but this is what makes modern economy possible. A company invests tons of money in R&D and then gets it back through patents they can protect.

For a government to extort companies to give up their IP is to steal, no mincing words.

Especially if the companies and people given access to the information extracted are close to the government, it's just another tool for them to control the economic environment with politics.

To claim this is some Robin Hood scheme that will bring equality in the world is to say stealing from rich countries is ok and we should do it more, companies be damned. It's essentially an extreme firm of communism and as someone who lived in that system for a while and is has first hand experience of how frustrating corrupted governments are to doing business, I can point at virtually all attempts to make it work and we can all see how they failed.

Chins wants to be competitive at someone else's R&D expense.

Edit: China improving is terrifying would you like to have that political system in your country? If yes most of would would rather have freedom of speech which btw allows us to have this conversation without fearing a knock on the door and prison for life.

>"do we really want to apply 16th century economics rules today? No"

Well, it's not 16th century economics, it's economics if you are a already developed country or a country in process of development. Those are different animals with different needs.

Of course, now that USA or Europe is already developed is time to apply different rules.

The economist Ha-Joon_Chang have a full book about those double standards called, appropriately in my opinion, "Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective"

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha-Joon_Chang)

You talk about "stealing", so making a moral judgement. For me, the moral thing is to answer: what is the way that more people have a good life?

> For a government to extort companies to give up their IP is to steal, no mincing words.

That isn't stealing. That is negotiating. You act like companies have a right to the chinese market.

> Chins wants to be competitive at someone else's R&D expense.

And our companies want access to the chinese market at china's expense.

> To claim this is some Robin Hood scheme that will bring equality in the world is to say stealing from rich countries is ok

The chinese aren't claiming to be robin hood.

THIS. So much This.

If you don’t like the Chinese playbook, don’t play in China. Your company does not have a right to the Chinese market on your terms - only on their terms. If you disagree, I’ve got a generic HCV drug market you (and Gilead) are going to love.

True there’s no right to a market. At the end of the day they can impose any rules they like and it’s up to companies to accept them or not.

But don’t make China look like a sad puppy who needs help. It’s a ferocious tiger (good for them) whose economic and military prominence would scare me and everyone who likes free speech and non authoritarian rule.

Negotiating IP rights that are different than the legal default as a condition of entry into a closed market is not theft. That’s just sound business and it’s perfectly legal in every sense of the word.

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