And so what???

The US pried the textile and locomotives industries from the UK, check the history of Samuel Slater[1]. Same happened for Japan under Meiji restoration. India and Brazil do the same for pharmaceutical patents, because they're too poor to afford paying them.

Stealing IP will happen, no matter what treaties and governments try to do. For poor countries it is a path they just don't have the luxury of giving up.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Slater

Edit: over-patriotic Americans seem to think this is just about them and call my argument whataboutism. It isn't both. I am stressing the fact that protectionism and stealing IP is a path almost every industrialized nation took. Even the UK did protectionism against India textiles to help their beginning textile industry.

The industrialized countries are trying to close the gates they used to get into their rich garden. My point is that right or wrong, moral or not, it simply won't work.

It's hard for me to believe that all the smart, capable company executives involved in planning and execution of operations in and around China are oblivious to IP risks.

There is an obvious upside of operating in Asia, both cheap labor (though now decreasing) and strong work ethic coupled with access to a huge market.

It seems to me that execs understand and take a calculated risk when they choose to do business in various parts of the world. If they cannot make this calculation, they should not be running a company.

More than anything else, the attitude displayed in this article appears to me as an attempt to defer (or pass to the public) the consequences of the above calculated choices. If not directly, through a trade war that will hurt all Americans. All the while, these companies keep their financial gain private, in the pockets of execs and shareholders.

There is something to be said for protecting IP in the interest of a country's defense, but the technology that qualifies for this type of protection should be the subject of public debate, not a president's whim. Furthermore, unless the companies that own this IP are taken over by the state, company execs will always be free to make the decision re. operating in Asia and between the associated IP risks and capital gain.

There's a gentlemen's agreement between nations that this is permissible for poor nations. China is no longer poor and now must act like a wealthy nation and accept IP laws.

The behavior they describe is exactly how every industrialized nation has become industrialized (except for UK). There is no way to develop a technologically advanced nation if you respect artificially imposed barriers such as patents, which by their very nature cannot be effectively enforced in foreign countries.

There's a rather surprising attitude in this discussion that the IP belongs to a country (e.g. "Allowing non-citizens to get access to the IP should be illegal."), as if it were some sort of nationalised asset in common ownership. It's a privately owned asset for private benefit. It's not a form of property that pays property tax.

Well, at least the cat’s out of the bag and the media aren’t pretending it doesn’t exist or that people are exaggerating, etc.

Of course now people are going to normalize it and say it’s no big deal after years of saying it was an exaggeration.

But that’s what you get when you get blinded by the lure of 1-billion potential consumers... along with an unfavorable trade agreement wich allowed for assymetrical tariffs, etc.

US companies go into China eyes wide open - they can extract a few quarters of profit from their products and services but that's it; the Chinese will then expect to do it themselves and keep all the profits to themselves.

To most its not a good deal. To US companies, that are driven by quarterly targets then it is very much a case of sacrificing the future for the present. And if they stay out of China then the odds are that hackers will either steal the info anyway or another western competitor will play ball.

There's just no way to stop this happening as I see it. The best non-US companies can do is negotiate an equity stake in their local partners and hope the government doesn't pass laws to take it away.

China doesn't need the technology per se. China is now an advanced technological country in its own right, even if the fruits of that may still be unevenly distributed -- as, to be fair, they are in the rest of the world as well. The behaviors described are primarily about control and power over strategic industries at a macro level.

I think I'd rather technology be dispersed without regulatory impedance. There's still the problem of how to reward/incentivize innovation and development of new technology, but maybe the benefits outweigh the costs or there's ways we haven't thought about how to reward and incentivize innovation.

I don't get it: why not just not do business with China? If they're going to take your IP, just don't go there.

The western markets has already peaked and is therefore "forced" to go to China. While from a western point of view it feels alarming to loose their edge. From a Chinese point of view, why would they let anyone share a piece of their growth with nothing in return.

A source of cheap labour, raw materials and a huge market, is something that people from ex-colonies are all too familiar with. One should also acknowledge the high tech cartels that exists.

In a way it is a free market, because people can not claim to not know what they were getting themselves into.

I've seen some recent pushes for "right to repair" legislation. I can see how this is great for consumers. I can also see how this forces companies to be more open about their components and interfaces, which weakens their ability to keep trade secrets. It also increases the attack surfaces for people and organizations attempting to compromise the device. I suspect the end result is more system on a chip design styles that are basically impossible to repair.

AMD has to license their stuff to Hygon too. I think it’s great. IP laws are stifling innovation and the fact that there is an escape hatch in China is a good thing.

It’s interesting the vast difference in reporting the media has on China’s IP issues vs India’s and even Canada’s.

I wonder if China only remade pharmaceutical IP while India remade technological, the reports would be different?

Or is it because China is a rival?

I think it wouldn’t be so bad if everyone forced their major contractors to share IP. Sure, it would be harder for a vendor to own a market for decades, but is that really a bad thing?

Every time you see a news post about a tech company "partnering" with a Chinese company, you should be thinking they were forced to do that. This has been going on for many years, but it became much more of a "rule" in China since a couple of years ago. It's when most of the large American tech companies started announcing "joint ventures" with Chinese firms almost in unison.

However, tech companies seem to be more than happy to give 50%+ of their business in China away, as well as 100% of the tech IP that will be stolen once the partnership happens. And then they whine about how restrictive the GDPR or a similar law in the US would be.

State sponsored stealing will get state sponsored slapping

just yesterday in Chicago

https://www.npr.org/2018/09/26/651689220/u-s-army-reservist-...

Technology transfer is not coerced if a company enters into a a contract to transfer technology in exchange for a payment, income that's related to sales, or licensing fees.

Listen to what the Qualcomm CEO said when a CNBC reporter asked whether China was stealing its technology:

https://youtu.be/rAV2y23jHaM?t=2m20s

Anyone got the text from behind the paywall?

Of course America got all its technology fair and square.

Whataboutism.

edit: If someone is using whataboutism (as the person I'm responding to is) there is no real argument to respond to.

Any modern day atrocity can be justified by saying that it was done in the past by a different nation. Saying that the US had done something in the past to justify a different countries' present day actions is intellectually lazy and dishonest and is meant to shut down discussion. I was just not trying to waste my time typing this entire statement out but apparently some of you don't understand why `whatabout x` isn't a real argument.

tl;dr: It steals it

Ah poor DuPont, who will think of the little and weak most powerful chemical company in the world. Oh the humanity.

I'm not one to agree with the right wing of US politics very often at all, but our country needs to sanction and tariff Chinese goods until US rightholders are reimbursed for their stolen technology AND the PRC greatly reforms its absymal human rights records.

People are literally living in a modern version of 1984, complete with re-education camps and stolen Western surveillance technology. No American can in good conscience send their technology to be stolen by a country that wants to imprison and torture entire states of its citizens.

If the PRC government merely didn't follow IP law, that would be a calculated risk. When the PRC steals our technology to power a global game of persecution, corruption, and espionage, it's morally wrong.