Do you think nationality is the only reason, or do you think they could also genuinely disagree with Huawei's treatment, for reasons that are reasonable if one accepts a different point of view?

I am not Chinese and do think that the amount of accusations is much larger than the body of evidence to support them, I'd guess there are others of similar opinion, some of them Chinese, others not.

What I dislike is people generally assuming that I somehow agree with every single thing Huawei, or the CCP for that matter, has ever done.

The body of evidence that Huawei steals intellectual property is quite substantial. If you want to read about it, you can start with these:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1124996/downl...

https://blogs.cisco.com/news/huawei-and-ciscos-source-code-c...

https://amlawdaily.typepad.com/motorolahuawei.pdf

https://www.mpegla.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/FINAL-Huaw...

I am looking for extensive evidence that they backdoor their equipment and feed data to the CCP. As far as the "intellectual property" goes, it is used by the winners to kick down the ladder they themselves climbed.

The U.S. used to steal from Europe while it was developing, now suddenly IP matters a lot.

The Japanese used to steal quite a bit of IP, yet Nintendo is now super hawkish to protect its own.

Chinese companies will get overly protective of its own IP once they sufficiently develop.

All in all, is a well known circle that may signal it's time to rethink how IP is currently structured and enforced around the world.

Would you mind pointing me to some specific cases of US technology companies stealing IP from European companies as the US was industrializing, or Japanese technology companies (including Nintendo) stealing IP? It is often more informative to speak about specific cases, rather than generalizing based on inexplicit information.

Businesses use IP laws to protect their own property rights. Whether you call the property owners "winners" is up to you, but that doesn't change the spirit or letter of IP laws.

We Were Pirates, Too

>The ship carrying Francis Cabot Lowell and his family home from England in the summer of 1812 was intercepted by a British war squadron, which held the passengers and crew for some days at the British base at Halifax, Canada. Lowell’s baggage was subject to several intensive searches, for his captors had been warned that he may have stolen designs for power textile weaving machinery, a serious crime in England. Lowell, indeed, had done just that — but, aware of the risk, had committed the designs to memory.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/12/06/we-were-pirates-too/

Wait, weren't the US and England at war in the summer of 1812? Wartime hardly seems like a reasonable comparison. Britain had been impressing American navy personnel (making them slave soldiers) for years by that time.

Interesting paper and I think anyone should read if only for the stories told, but if the only cases happened in the 1800s, then I don't think this is particularly relevant for deciding whether we should enforce consequences on foreign companies for IP infringement or not. The US also permitted racial slavery in that era - we ceased commerce both voluntarily and in an official manner with South Africa over their racially stratified society in 1990. Why would we treat China differently than Apartheid South Africa because of something that happened 200 years ago?

The US has been dominant economically since the late 1800s, when their incentives switch to protecting IP. If the theory of the above poster that IP is used to pull the ladder up is true then it does make sense.

Incidentally, US Foreign policy (as well as that of any nation) even in 2020, when you take justifications, stunningly aligned with US national interest. Make of that what you will.

The US has become a very developed market since then, though certainly not the "dominant market", but regardless should we as actors in the current legal system advocate for something that gives preferential treatment of Chinese businesses OR an entirely different system with very little protections for IP?

I don't think so, and would actually prefer we take on something closer to the Chinese approach of leasing land in the same way we encourage people to put ideas in the public domain for a guarantee of a period of market monopoly. Though there are many reforms about current US IP law that I would love to see.

>US Foreign policy (as well as that of any nation) even in 2020, when you take justifications, stunningly aligned with US national interest.

I disagree - most nations advocate for their self-interests, otherwise we would be the United States of the World right now rather than the United States of America. Similarly, many countries have a foreign policy favorable to China because of economic incentives with a voluntary relationship between them. Are all countries or localities as equally 'autonomous' as China or the US when deciding with whom their most beneficial economic relationships are? No, though I don't think "dropping IP law" is a particular benefit to increasing that autonomy either.

Asides from Afghanistan and Iraq, are there any states you can name that are advocating for almost objectively US aligned policy?

I meant that most nations action's align with their interests, not their rhetoric or ideology.

I'm not making a claim as to what we should do, I'm just saying that our current IP system has nothing to do with morality and everything to do with Western power and interest.

Personally I think a system such as the one you described is preferable too, but I'm just explaining the Realist (and by extension Materialist in the Fuerbachian sense, and thus Marxist, and thus Chinese) perspective on why laws are the way they are (which is incidentally correct), by contrast with the Idealist narrative that States tend to use to justify their interests.

> our current IP system has nothing to do with morality and everything to do with Western power and interest.

Property rights are neither a question of morality nor a question of realpolitik. They are an economic construct. Property is the only so-called natural right that does not exist at birth. We are born with life, and we are born with liberty, but we are not born with property.

I never understood this line of argument. Economics is 100% inextricable from realpolitik. Whether you have a socially constructed economic right or not is 100% a question of realpolitik.

Also, private property simply isn't a natural right, not even by the definition of Hobbes. The right of exclusion of something you don't use is neither natural nor universal in most early human civilizations, it just simply isn't a natural right.

And intellectual property in particular is perhaps the opposite of a natural right.

Locke ran with Life, Liberty, and Estate but even the American founding fathers went with the idea that Estate is an socioeconomic construct for the purpose of "freedom".

Famous case in Japan is Hitachi/Mitsubishi stole IBM's property.

https://www.nytimes.com/1982/06/23/business/japanese-executi...

Huawei doesn't need "backdoors" for the CCP, because they are CCP. The higher-ups are undoubtedly all party members.

I’m sure a lot of normal employees are CCP members too. CCP has 90 million members after all. Statistically, 1 in 5 Chinese has family members that are CCP member. So I’m not sure what you’re getting at. Are you proposing that we ban 20% of the Chinese population?

Am not sure the party membership works the way you seem to imply. Just because someone is a member of the CCP doesn't mean they'll steal tech, spy for China or even agree with the CCP on many issues for that matter. I'd guess it's more like getting some sort of a certificate that makes you more prestigious?

so if people want to work outside of china, better not get that certificate if you don't want to be held accountable for supporting an authoritorian government. Easy.

As for the spying: it's relatively common knowledge that the chinese government really likes to use the fact that someone might have relatives in mainland china to convice people that they should spy for them. So my guess is that people doing this just for the "prestige" don't even need this kind of stuff...

> so if people want to work outside of china, better not get that certificate if you don't want to be held accountable for supporting an authoritorian government. Easy.

The U.S. government killed thousands of civilians in the Middle East over the last decade with taxpayer money.

So if you don't support killing civilians, stop paying taxes?

Sometimes it's not as easy.

> So my guess is that people doing this just for the "prestige" don't even need this kind of stuff...

I get your point, but maybe "prestige" isn't the right word. If it's easier to function in society if you're a member and does not require you to commit anything immoral (at least not directly), would you join? My bet would be on yes.

wait, first it was a "prestigious certificate", now it's mandatory. ok.

And yes, maybe handling certain people on both sides of the aisle as what they are (e.g. war criminals) is indeed what foreign people should do. In theory, the domestic issue in the US could be solved by voting for a non-drone-killing executive – in China: good luck voting!

> would you join? like I said, we had this with the nazi-party. People joined, afterwards they knew nothing, which might be true in their view because of domestic propaganda. Maybe we should wake up and tell the people clearly that they are supporting a 21-st century government actually building concentration camps. And yes, if you tell them that you have a problem with that side of things (e.g. you are only targeting politicians vanity not "the economy"), in a country as big and dense as China (they've always had their purges, yet always some opposition rose) opposition would eventually form.

> wait, first it was a "prestigious certificate", now it's mandatory. ok.

It's not mandatory. But lots of things are not mandatory. You staying overtime when your team does. It's not mandatory, but is strongly implied that maybe you should stay too.

All am saying is that being a member of the CCP probably should not be the (sole) deciding factor when you're letting someone in. In fact I'd think that spies would explicitly make sure to NOT be members.

Posting like this is not allowed on HN. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

For more please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24145915 elsewhere in this thread, as well as these past explanations:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&type=comment&dateRange=a...

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

I actually think you are Chinese. Why lie to make your point?

We've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines egregiously.

Personal attacks are not ok. Smears like this are particularly not ok. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They are at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The truth is that the HN community is diverse and divided, with plenty of people on all sides of this issue. Attacking people personally (let alone nationally, ethnically, or racially) simply because they disagree with you is the epitome of what we don't want here. This is not a China issue, it's a Hacker News issue, an internet issue, and frankly a human issue.

Plenty of past explanation here:

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&type=comment&dateRange=a...

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

Chinese people are allowed to have opinions and argue their beliefs as well, so your suspicion here is immaterial.

You should assume good faith. I know several non-Chinese both on HN and in real life who defend these same points.

This is already known. Yes, they might have expropriated technology from 30 years ago, when they first started out. So what? They were caught, and they paid up the price for their malfeasance. They settled outside of court with Cisco.

Cisco doesn't even complain about this anymore, since they got a pretty penny from Huawei for it.

And they are not the only company that started out doing something shady. There are plenty of other examples of American companies that have done things in their past that are also shady.

Why don't you start with something more recent? Like, their 5G technology? Unless of course, your premise is that they also have a time machine and traveled into the future, and stole this 5G technology from Cisco as well.

They offered 2.5x salary...

Tha fact those ex-colleagues and friends who bought and use iPhone in the first place indciates they are not generally a nationalist person. The reason they bought Huawei is because they realized when the US is banning Huawei, while China is not banning Apple, that is simply not fair, the US is not what it claims to be, or what they thought it to be. To be clear, I don't think it's fair either.

But every major US tech company is banned or blocked from competing in China, isn’t it? and has been for a decade or more. Apple is the one exception. In which direction do they think the current situation is unfair?

(to be clear, I’m not sure whether I agree with it or not, but it seems like a strange thing to focus on exclusively)

>But every major US tech company is banned or blocked from competing in China, isn’t it?

Nope, Microsoft operates in China, so does IBM, Uber did before the Chinese branch was acquired by Didi (they weren't banned, just outcompeted).

China is funnily enough even facebook's second largest market by revenue (about 5 billion) from Chinese advertisers.

Google probably could operate in China and I guess doesn't because it fears American backlash.

Doing business in China is arguably more complicated for American tech firms than the other way around, but American companies are most definitely not blanked banned or anything.

That news surprised me. $5 billion USD a year in revenue is a lot of money. Even for Facebook.

They are just printing money from their China business.

Now, imagine if Trump told Zuck that Facebook couldn’t do any more transactions with China. That deserves a LOL..

I'd say more like every websites large enough that won't censor contents towards the liking of the Chinese government for their service within China got banned. It's not an action against companies, but rather websites (as a form of media). Those companies can and are doing business in China, Facebook have sales agencies, Google have multiple offices and sales agencies, while the US quite literally banned Huawei as a company from doing business with anyone in the US.

google, facebook and twitter and any free speech platforms are banned, but non-chinese companies can set up manufacturing I think as long as there is part local control (I think I remember 50% for car companies)

Definitely not a level playing field though.

Or they could have been worried about not being seen as nationalistic to their peers and bosses, even if they aren’t that nationalistic themselves. A lot of nationalism in China is derived from social and peer pressure.

> despite being outside of China

Yeah that doesn't seem to be the case.

Peer pressure from other Chinese still exists especially outside of China, but it is more likely they felt nationalism since they were abroad and it wasn't being forced down their throat everyday. The best way to make kids hate Mao is to force them to take a class on him.

You don't need to assume patriotic sentiment for this. The Chinese are paying a lot more than other companies, and the project is clearly fantastic. Even I would be interested if this was happening in my industry.

Plenty of my friends switched from iPhones to Huawei, they're not Chinese though it's just since iPhones got more expensive when you drop them a few times you just decide to go for something cheaper and Huawei hits all the points they look for in iPhones.

The value prop of the iPhone just isn't there anymore if you are not stuck in the ecosystem.

I'm confused. Are you saying that mainland Chinese feel -more- nationalistic if they live in the ASEAN region, i e. outside of their home country? Or are these employees from an ASEAN country but are just Chinese in ethnicity?

Dumping Apple isn't the best example, since Apple is a luxury product that is more about signaling status than about a great computing power-vs-cost value proposition.

>since Apple is a luxury product that is more about signaling status than about a great computing power-vs-cost value proposition

this isn't a universal phenomenon, funnily enough in China the brand appears to have the opposite effect[1]. It's more seen like a vanity purchase akin to I guess something like a Gucci bag.

"Apple iPhone users in China are generally less educated, hard-up and with few valuable assets, compared to users of other mobile phone brands such as Huawei Technologies or Xiaomi, according to a report by research agency MobData. The Shanghai-based firm also found that most iPhone users are unmarried females aged between 18 and 34, who graduated with just a high-school certificate and earn a monthly income of below 3,000 yuan (HK$3,800). They are perceived to be part of a group known as the “invisible poor” – those who do not look as poor as their financial circumstances."

[1] https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/2174310/research-highlight...

> more about signaling status than about a great computing power-vs-cost value proposition

The iPhone SE is up there in power-vs-cost, and in terms of dollars per year of usage Apple probably has the best numbers.

I agree with the sibling comments about technical superiority, however, I see a flaw in your logic. If people are buying apple for signalling, then it would make sense for them to similarly ditch it in favor of another signal which better fits their identity.

Not everybody buys lates ridiculously overpriced iPhones. Some of us buys Apple because Android has unbearable UX. Older models or SE models are perfectly fine.

I buy Apple iPhones for the quality of the design and manufacturing, the 5+ years of updates, and the focus on platform security.

the new iphone SE is an absolute killer in that exact metric.

Nothing different here from the patriotic sentiment in America. One should not be so surprised with something that is already so common in a particular Western country.