200 years ago the US was a notorious thief of tech. The UK had strong export protections on skilled workers and important machinery, especially in the spinning industry.
Alexander Hamilton helped steal many trade secrets and helped many skilled US artisans migrate to the US, that was his government's policy, including paying for artisans' travels, suggesting to hand out bounties to people smuggling artisans out of the UK, and so on.
The US' strong copyright laws and international enforcement came later.
It's not out of the question that they're doing it as a pretext for protectionism. If their companies file a large number of garbage patents then their courts can throw them out if anyone tries to use them against a Chinese company but enforce them whenever they're used against a foreign company.
> Over the past decade, China has demonstrated serious resolve to enforce an effective IP rights regime, and to bring the system in line with other developed systems in the US and Europe
I think this is entirely questionable where you have rampant IP theft [1][2] (I can recall couple of major recent incidents), and the claim that 1 in 5 US companies face IP theft in China [3]. The Chinese government wants to attract foreign businesses and number 1 concern for any western company when they want to do business in China is IP. It doesn't surprise me that the Chinese government is drumming up its stance on IP protection.
Lack of respect for IP runs deep in Chinese culture, articulated in great detail by Paul Middler in his book "What's wrong with China?". Having worked in China for a long period, there is no better summary of the Chinese business culture.
[1] Huawei Case: https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-prosecutors-probe-huawei-on...
[2] Micron Case: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/22/technology/china-micron-c...
[3] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/28/1-in-5-companies-say-china-s...
If you are reading Paul Middler's book about China, you probably don't know about China, because clearly Paul Middler doesn't know China[1].
[1]: https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2125044/book-revi...
Thanks for the link, I am gonna read about it and see what's being debated.
The company policy is to not allow internet on machines connected to the company network. They say that it is very typical on China for companies to try to atract workers from the competition, and these take with them not only know-how, but internal files from the company they leave too. Hence the firewalling.
It's ridiculous because I'm speaking of consumer electronics, not the military. The team morale is super low because they are fighting against the environment, not the problem they want to solve.
Maybe they only want to crash the western subsidiary and get the prestigious brand name(?). Anyways it seems that they are getting a taste of their own medicine.
What really matters in international relations is not how countries used to behave - it's how they behave now. Every country of note has at some point in the past been a pariah of one form or another.
https://www.raconteur.net/risk-management/how-china-became-l...
> “Over the past decade, China has demonstrated serious resolve to enforce an effective IP rights regime, and to bring the system in line with other developed systems in the US and Europe,” says Xingye Huang, associate at trademark and patent attorneys Abel & Imray. Indeed, China is on track to achieving its 2020 strategic goal laid out in 2008 of attaining a comparatively high level in terms of the creation, utilisation, protection and administration of IP rights.