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I'm still amazed how they are not under sanctions for wholesale IP theft.

They must have thousands of key decision makers in the West in their pocket.

>Still, the State Department warned - as it had for years - that publicly confronting China over its online economic warfare would damage relations with Beijing, so American government statements about the hacking did not disclose the scope of China's efforts.

https://www.newsweek.com/2013/11/01/how-edward-snowden-escal...

Generally for IP violations, you get sued. Like Huawei has been sued a bunch.

Western companies have been happy to hand over IP. It's part of the deal. If they didn't like the deal, they wouldn't have gone to China. It can't be called 'theft' when it was willingly given.

Pretty certain that wholesale theft was not part of the "voluntary deal". Can you point to exact language in agreements that granted them absolute rights to any IP?

However, the western executives that signed those deals, have long made their massive bonuses, it's all been paid out and some of those execs probably even retired. What do they care?

Such a great way to raid the company you manage at the expense of shareholders/employees.

> Can you point to exact language in agreements that granted them absolute rights to any IP?

Those agreements between private entities are almost certainly not public. However, I found a press release by Siemens AG [1] that says "Part of the contractual terms and conditions involves support and technology transfer in connection with production of the trains." In another press release [2], a Siemens VP is quite chipper about this: "Siemens is even more confident to support the development and modernization of Chinese railways and transfer highly advanced and proven technology of international standard to China"

I don't think you can speak of "wholesale theft" in this case of a voluntary deal.

[1] https://www.siemens.com/press/en/pr_cc/2005/11_nov/tstr20051...

[2] https://www.siemens.com/press/en/pr_cc/2006/04_apr/tstk20060...

Read something other than marketing materials for PR purposes.

The CEO of Siemens at the time was Klaus Kleinfeld. The bribery scandals were so bad in 2007 that he was forced out, and forced to settle with Siemens, 2 millions euros.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Kleinfeld#Bribery_invest...

Now, ostensibly, these were scandals about Siemens bribing other countries. Do you think people at Siemens, with such high moral integrity, managed to pocket some bribes themselves?

Perhaps in exchange for handing over valuable IP? What's a signature or two between friends.

I don't see a reason for discounting Siemens' own PR department as a source for what the decision-makers at Siemens think of deals they make. Whether they were bribed to agree is a different matter. In any case, it was public knowledge that technology would be transferred, so still not something I'd call "theft".

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