My understanding from the tool & die industry is that’s only been happening the last decade or so. IMO that’s the real issue, because it’s decimating the ability to manufacture here and sure design can happen in the US, but if you can’t build the molds for the latest tech here then it doesn’t matter. Those designs are given straight to China, no need to reverse engineer.
https://www.lightreading.com/5g/huaweis-patents-wont-save-it...
I only read this once and don't know if it is true. Supposedly Technology Transfer was/is a distinct engineering specialty in China, up there perhaps with Civil, Electrical.
Coincidentally this was while working with a US manufacturer which somehow could never satisfy a Tech Transfer arrangement completely enough to get the final contracted payment. (Mixed reasons there.)
Frankly I wonder if China will [thus] preserve aspects of industrial civilization while the US works and/or collapses toward a relative dark age. (One case in point: nuclear power generation.)
"what has company X done?"
"company Y did this bad thing"
"all companies in Z do bad thing"
GGP: Has anyone published the evidence of Huawei being an "arm of the PRC surveillance state"?
GP: My father used to work for molex, one of his biggest complaints were fixing the molds after they were sent to Chinese factories. They would try to deconstruct them and couldn’t put them back together
Taking apart competitors' products is standard & ethically accepted practice virtually everywhere, there are lots of published anecdotes. Eg the one in Soul of a New Machine, where the team at Data General analyze a VAX. And there's no relevance to the surveillance state.
In terms of an anecdotal evidence... My father used to work for molex, one of his biggest complaints were fixing the molds after they were sent to Chinese factories. They would try to deconstruct them and couldn’t put them back together (this was the 90’s, early 2000’s). So they would be shipped back to the US operations to fix.
Eventually, he ended up spending years training up Chinese to replace him (my father, in China). Molex moved much of its tool making shop to China and shut down most US tool and die making operations.
Anyway, China has people who are trained, on factory floors, who are there to reverse engineer processes.
This has been known for decades, companies don’t really seem to care or know (I guess that’s possible as they are outsourcing manufacturing).
I have no doubt this is designed across all their industries and systems. It’s in their interest to do this.
EDIT: I want to point out, there’s no longer a need for China to reverse engineer. US companies ship the designs straight to China. This is probably why we’ve seen China catch up so fast. We trained their workforce and now provide them all the IP before we build it.