It was taught in first year of international business classes that outsourcing abroad was functionally equivalent to a transfer of technology — so you always had to factor in the time it took for your magic low-cost solution to fade out and become your competitor, essentially, but not just them: by then the whole market has access to that cost structure, so you have to keep finding new lower-cost solutions, and keep innovating on your technological part (HQ in Europe, USA, Japan, etc).

It's just international business 101, really, and has been for at least 20 years in my personal experience — but I'm pretty sure I read articles from the 1970s describing this process, because Japan was the first one to pull it off brilliantly.

People focus on China because somebody is waiving that name a lot and his voice carries a lot through the media; but this is definitely just how the world works, and has been forever — if you ask workers from the next village to come and help build stuff with your super tech, it won't take long before they replicate the process over there.

And that's called culture, knowledge, it lives and grows and moves like populations of viruses or molecules, it's been modeled for some time in anthropology at that macro-level.

To somehow equate the direct theft of IP and innovation as just 'shared culture and knowledge' completely avoids the material criminality at hand.

Huawei is charged with literally incentivizing their employees to steal knowledge and IP, and of directly copying designs, on a systematic and widespread scale. These activities are instituted far beyond just Huawei.

This is not a situation of the natural flow of industrial knowledge, it's direct theft.

You wouldn’t download a car. But I would. I don’t think it’s possible to steal information.

So did Turing.

https://www.history.com/news/industrial-revolution-spies-eur...

/s

But very good point.

I feel like military tech is another issue entirely tho. And concerns me with what I'm perceiving as an arms race with carriers and fighter jets over I presume China's ability to project power within their naval territory .

Invaded Chinese sovereign territory during the Korean war and got beat back into the current border of South Korea.

Supported a western friendly government during WW2 to take over China.

In International relations there are no rules.

"After the first two months of war, South Korean Army (ROKA) and the US forces rapidly dispatched to Korea were on the point of defeat. As a result, the ROKA and US troops retreated to a small area behind a defensive line known as the Pusan Perimeter. In September 1950, an amphibious UN counter-offensive was launched at Incheon, and cut off many KPA troops in South Korea. Those who escaped envelopment and capture were forced back north. UN forces invaded North Korea in October 1950 and moved rapidly towards the Yalu River—the border with China—but on 19 October 1950, Chinese forces of the People's Volunteer Army (PVA) crossed the Yalu and entered the war.[51] The surprise Chinese intervention triggered a retreat of UN forces back below the 38th Parallel by late December."

I can't find anything related to US/UN forces invading. But this is most likely a western view of the war. China looks like anything but just standing idly by during the war (did not realize that China was deeply involved in the Korean War before).

https://visitguilin.org/things-to-do/guilin-attractions/flyi...

And if you insist on applying 18th and 19th century situations to current IP theft, then logically you should also be willing to accept what the British did to America: burn the capital. Is Huawei's IP harvest worth the torching of Zhongnanhsi and the Renmin Datang?

Yes.

> I thought America was the aggressor in that war and Britain just retaliated.

It's more complicated than that. Britain tried to prohibit America from trading with France, as part of their war against Napoleon. America thought that was against international law. Britain also had a habit of seizing sailors off of American ships and forcing them into service in the Royal Navy, which the US regarded as extremely over the line. The British were also (pre-war, IIUC) arming Native Americans on the US western frontier.

Eventually, the US declared war. But I'm not sure that makes them the aggressor, at least not 100%...

I am pretty sure US did not invade Chinese territory during the Korean War. There are a few instances of US fighters straying into China but pretty sure it wouldn't count as 'invasion'.

Did you mean when the US saved China from being obliterated by nuclear weapons by the USSR in 1969? Or when the US saved China from continued genocide by the Empire of Japan by almost single-handedly defeating the Japanese military in the Pacific? Maybe you mean when the US funded the build-out of modern China through trade & commerce and not only allowed them into the WTO, but openly invited them in (we got rewarded nicely for that).

> Invaded Chinese sovereign territory during the Korean war and got beat back into the current border of South Korea.

When the US tried to save the people of North Korea - the Korean War was a UN military mission - from half a century of extreme poverty, genocide and misery that continues to this day (and with zero human rights). With China on the opposite side of that equation, supporting the outcome of genocide, dictatorship, zero human rights, extreme poverty. Meanwhile South Korea became an affluent, liberal democracy.

> Supported a western friendly government during WW2 to take over China.

When the US tried to spare China half a century of extreme poverty, genocide and misery. China could have developed much faster and with human rights, as with South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan - and without the slaughter of tens of millions of people.

Perhaps if those Yankees could have pointed at the Brits stealing tea trees, then the Brits would have been struck with a sense of self-realization of their own hypocrisy, and let the Yanks make off with those machine designs with no hassle?

> Pretending this is somehow how China specifically operates is disingenuous.

No one is pretending this is how China specifically operates. This IS how certain entities from China operate. Especially certain SOE that have the backing of the CCP.

All the vast majority of people in the "West" know about China is whatever happens to be propagated by mainstream propagandists for current purposes. Ignorance is much more common (and hence likely) than disingenuity.

Once again the Chinese 'moral relativism' argument I think falls flat.

"Hey look, 500 years ago someone did something, so hey, it's ok"

What is 'disingenuous' is this kind of rhetoric that completely denies the material issues at hand. China (and not just Huawei) has been systematically stealing and cheating far beyond anyone else (by the way, probably anyone else in history not that it matters), and this is really just the tip of the iceberg.

These charges are well warranted, and they should be applied to any number of entities who've encroached on general principles of trade.

If China wants to play with such shenanigans, it's fine actually, it's their choice to use this strategy, but the response should be pretty forceful as well.

Plus, whataboutism.

So? It's not like the US didn't know that it was breaking British laws back then. IP protectionism is nothing new, it is is fair to make comparisons to 18th/19th century events.

Are you saying it's okay because others did it before ? That it shouldn't be debated ?

What's the position ? What is the point of preventing people from saying China is playing the IP theft game hard at the moment ?

Yes and no - it depends entirely on whose perspective you are arguing from (upstart vs. establishment), and even that changes over time. For the US, it used to be okay, but no longer is. Also it's not "others" who did it before, but the very same nation-state that is now screaming blue murder.

> That it shouldn't be debated ?

Oh, it should absolutely be debated, but the US has no moral high ground when making its arguments. Turnabout is fair play

Well, this is the classic continuity problem: is the US from centuries ago the same US of today ?

> Oh, it should absolutely be debated, but the US has no moral high ground when making its arguments. Turnabout is fair play

I am from Europe. Anyway, I disagree. Moral stances aren't cancelled because past wrongdoings.

Yes

I'm just pointing out that every other nation seems to have gone through a phase of "cheating" to get to where they are, to the point where I can't even say with 100% certainty that it's possible to become a technological superpower without doing it.