Weird you can’t see the issue when the university he was a professor in AND the grants he received from the federal government explicitly forbid taking outside money without notification/approval.

>The National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health do allow professors to be part of foreign talent programs, but require they disclose it.

So the issue is not the country (China) or the fact that he joined a foreign program. The issue is the nondisclosure.

From my first quoted example, the tone implies that the issue is China itself which is where I got that impression.

> From my first quoted example, the tone implies that the issue is China itself which is where I got that impression.

Well, there's an issue there too. The Thousand Talents program has a pattern of paying people to break US laws.

China has surpassed the US economically, it has made it clear it wants to dominate the technology space.

While we are in denial, it is clear even to naive Chinese that they are at war with the US when it comes to technology. The only upper hand that the US has over China is the decades of research expertise in core areas.

It looks like the professor was targeted to transfer this expertise to the Chinese. No different from flying a chief scientist from your competing company to help setup a lab like the original, IP at risk or not is irrelevant.

I think you also miss that the CCP being in control through a terrifying regime of absolute control over a population certainly has its negative impacts. That and their financial system and banking systems have been having some incredibly serious problems which would then be de-stabilizing for the party in control.

I feel like as someone on HN you should know the adage well ... don't believe the hype. I will add, think for yourself in the mix.

What you mentioned may or may not be true, however China is exactly where Germany was before WW2.

Not that we are going to war anytime soon, but we are definitely in a war on economic and technology dominance.

>The only upper hand that the US has over China is the decades of research expertise in core areas.

And the ability to draw and assimilate global talent.

And:

1. Military build up since WWII, including global logistics and bases. For example, the F-15 is 104-0, and no one has come even close to the F-22 (arguably not even the US with the F-35)

2. The best infrastructure (and supporting services) in the world

3. Reserve currency (for now).

It's important not to forget these while on the China hype train.

One of the bigger downsides that the US has is that we are used to a higher standard of living compared to other countries. This was possible by the aftermath of WWII, where everyone else was destroyed. Not so much now, as global infrastructure/development is catching up and we are starting to revert to mean, which means down.

Yep! The potential for a massive demographic crisis has to be worrying for the CCP we well. The current generation will know a higher standard of living and have higher expectations than their parents and if/when growth slows that could be a serious difficulty

A complex system like F22 is one step away from loosing global dominance.

Our technology is accelerating exponentially, I wouldn't be surprised if manned fighters become obsolete in a decade.

Germany produced some of the most sophisticated weapons in a short span during their time because they were focused. While we are busy optimizing clicks and politicizing gender pronouns, China has shutdown all kinds of virtual industry.

I mean we're all at war with the US economically and technologically, no need to be too dramatic.

I'll tell you, from a non-US perspective (Im French) it's extremely important we have a balance so that even if the US becomes irrational and untrustworthy (think an even worse Trump) we dont all start starving and disconnecting the internet lol

I chose to emigrate to China instead of the US exactly for that reason and China chose to open its door much more easily to me also because they understand they have to compete.

China has political flaws we cant deny, but the US, dude, dont get me started on its potential, or even its current ability, to do great damage. And so far the negative american impact on France is much larger than the Chinese one, so it's not always obvious to me we should blindly follow the US in their little showdown.

So you’re the type of Western person I see write pro-China article on scmp.com?

Like this…

https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3159492/underst...

If you’re pro-French, why emigrate at all? Theoretically you have value to offer, which is why China wants you in the first place. Thus you’re helping them instead of your homeland, and China is playing for keeps.

> China has surpassed the US economically, it has made it clear it wants to dominate the technology space.

What? Should the stun their growth so that they can show their obedience?

This does not make any sense.

> While we are in denial, it is clear even to naive Chinese that they are at war with the US when it comes to technology. The only upper hand that the US has over China is the decades of research expertise in core areas.

It's quite obvious why they want to have tech on their own, since that's basically what makes a nation first world. That doesn't mean that there's any war going on. Do you think you're at war with the EU, too, due to the Euro and their economic growth?

Is it normal for researchers to get paid that much money directly to one of their bank accounts for collaborating with outside universities? If it's not normal, doesn't that smell a whole lot like a bribe to you?

It could be benign I guess but it definitely could also be a state sponsored or run operation to steal tech. It's not like China doesn't and hasn't pilfered outside businesses for their own interests.

IP law is what it is, but you can make very good arguments that it (esp patents) doesn't actually help society at large, and that it shouldn't exist in its current form. I think you'll find a lot of people on HN who would back that.

Somehow when it comes to China, people grab for any excuse to criticize them and "stealing tech" is one of them. Certainly it is possible to come about knowledge by nefarious means, but that doesn't mean that it isn't legitimate for China to try to learn things from other people.

As for some professor getting paid, tech profs can be a pretty hot commodity, so it's not in itself surprising that a prof is making big bucks teaching people about his subject and perhaps also introducing his network.

This is all very nice and for example Apple could share all their IP and give away their iPhone IP to china IF THEY WANT TO. It's a free world (in the US anyway).

But that's not what is going on here. In the current framework we live in, there is IP and there is knowledge and that knowledge is funded and worked on under certain rules. If you break those rules there are consequences.

That is not the framework we have. National sovereignty exists and if the Chinese don't want to follow IP law in some way that is their right. Most third world countries wish they couldn't, they just get strongarmed.

It's not a free world when the US and Europe are trying to impose their laws on you, and if you refuse to follow their laws then their citizens are prohibited from dealing with yours.

China might be sovereign, but the professor isn't. Notice how China isn't expected to show up in court.

The professor is not accused of IP offenses. This is a few steps removed from that.

It is the framework we have; as a result of China’s WTO accession, that’s the framework.

They literally agreed to an IP framework.

Then you can try to convince the WTO to impose consequences if it really is the framework. In reality while this would work for a weaker developing country it probably won't work here.

There is an excellent argument that IP law doesn't help society at large - that is why China is ignoring IP law. They need to grow their economy ASAP to protect themselves from the United States military, and the strategy seems to involve technical dominance. They can't do that if they weigh themselves down with IP laws; they already have enough problems with innovation.

That observation is entirely consistent with the US wanting to be exceedingly careful about IP exfiltrating to China.

>protect themselves from the United States military

Protect themselves from the US military how? When they start imperial subjugation campaigns...or?

China's malicious aspirations are the only thing the US is concerned with.

Neither China nor the US are, historically or currently, moral pillars for the just use of military power.

It's clear enough to note that China has short-term aspirations of invading a sovereign state, and leave it at that.

One actively cultivated a culture of establishing an absolutist surveillance state resulting in the death and torture of tens of millions, often at the hands of their own children, in the course of a decade or so, is currently participating in genocide, has institutionally striven to sustain an ethnostate, treats their population like cattle, and exercises extrajudicial imprisonment and execution against vast swaths of the population to preserve political power.

There is no comparison of morality between the US and China. For all its faults and failures the US is unequivocally a more moral and just nation.

Let's not just leave it at that. I won't let you deceptively downplay the egregious evil China is and has been responsible for. It's directly responsible for multiple events that when measured over the course of history, are the most insane human atrocities ever committed.

China Oana monstrous regime to its own people, and has been exporting the technology and know-how for their monstrous treatment more and more.

However, the US has killed many times more people in other countries, and brutalized countless nations - Vietnam, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Iran, Irak, Cuba, Palestine, Cambodia and many others.

They are both immoral, but i d different ways at different times, like all empires have been and forever will be, from the Romans to the Arabs to the Mongols to the French, Dutch, Belgians etc.

There are lots of places where your argument is nonsense, but I feel like the most important thing to address is this:

> However, the US has killed many times more people in other countries

That's just inaccurate. The founding of the current communist regime resulted in more deaths within China's borders than all of the US's military campaigns (and espionage) since WW2 combined. I've seen it said a lot that the "US kills more!" So I wonder if that's just a talking point the CCP is trying to disseminate to distract from their current genocide.

It's hard to exceed the Great Leap Forward's 15-30M+. Even the Soviet Union's Holodomor is calculated around 6M.

I meant the US has killed more people abroad than China has killed abroad. So, if I were a citizen of China, I have many reasons to fear the Chinese government; if I were a citizen of the USA, I would not have much reason to fear the US government.

But, if I am a citizen of, say, Lebanon, I have many more reasons to fear the USA than I have to fear China. I'm much more likely to be killed by the US government than the Chinese government.

Without context it is a pointless statistic. The US was involved on the just side of the two largest wars in modern history. That's where the overwhelming majority of its foreign killings comes from. And while regrettable, they were lawful and necessary. You can't call someone a murderer for defending themselves from attack.

I don't see how something can be both regrettable and necessary? Also, as well as the two wars that the US was on the 'just' side of, it's also been on the quite-hard-to-call-just side of many others, where it was not exactly defending itself either.

Because war sucks but going to war is preferable to letting imperial japan and nazi germany rule the world.

>However, the US has killed many times more people in other countries, and brutalized countless nations

You are very clearly uninformed about history. Especially if that's your list of brutalized countries with zero insight into the many factors stimulating US intervention in most of them and the aftermath resulting from failed or cessation of intervention, especially in those supported by the CCP.

Vietnam, Cambodia, and Southeast Asia Aftermath

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_at_Hu%E1%BA%BF

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viet_Cong_and_People%27s_Army_...

https://hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP6.HTM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indochina_refugee_crisis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide

https://alphahistory.com/vietnamwar/post-war-vietnam/#Purges...

El Salvador and Cuba I will grant that the clandestine support of a coup and refusal to condemn an oppressive, violent junta that came to power was inexcusable on the part of the US, but its involvement still has nothing compared to the CCP and USSR involvement in mass genocides and democides across the globe. The guerillas weren't benevolent liberators either.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-03-18-mn-12349-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba

https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/11/26/cuba-fidel-castros-recor...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB121496498705421951

Nicaragua Another good example of the faults and failures of the US historically, but incomparable to the CCP, and aligned with global economics at the time. A victim of the intense geopolitical tensions and climate in the late 19th and early 20th century thanks in large part to the fallout from the Spanish-American War.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Wars

Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq. The collapse of the Ottomon Empire was the motivating factor in harsh and enduring political tensions in Central Asia. Not US intervention. US involvement in Afghanistan all started with solicited intervention by the populace for help against imperial actions by the USSR. Continued intervention was not purely political or economic in nature, and certainly not genocidal or democidal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Afghan_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_Civil_War_(1992%E2%80%9...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_Civil_War_(1996%E2%80%9...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Afghanistan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_crimes#Afghanistan_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Emirate_of_Afghanistan...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Hazara_people#A...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalq

Iran Another failure, yet still incomparable to the history of the CCP. The rise of an Islamic theocracy in the geopolitical landscape of Iran should not be surprising, regardless of US intervention. It coincides with other theocratic revolutions in the region that were not the consequence of intervention by the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Zia-ul-Haq

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_republic

Hopefully with this history lesson you develop an understanding that even with the many wrongs the US has committed over time, none come close to the CCP in its relatively short existence. The US has killed orders of magnitude less people domestically and internationally, justified and unjustified, across its entire history than the CCP has unjustifiably across the globe in the last 75 years.

Taking literally the first atrocity you list:

> The massacre at Huế came under increasing press scrutiny later, when press reports alleged that South Vietnamese "revenge squads" had also been at work in the aftermath of the battle, searching out and executing citizens that had supported the communist occupation.[10][11]

This feels like the classic 'barrage of bullshit' strategy, where a load of dubious claims are thrown out in the knowledge that it's near impossible to refute them all, and refuting part of them will come across as "well, this one might be contested, but look at all the others!".

Yes you're right, there's no evidence the South Vietnamese did any such thing

Wikipedia editors at work

All of these cases are complicated.

Taking just Cambodia - the Khmer Rouge regime was of course supported by China with massive resources. However, the US has also killed tens of thousands of Cmabodians directly in bombing campaigns during the Vietnam War, between 30,000 and 150,000 (likely committing the war crime of Aggression, as they were not in a state of war with Cambodia); this helped galvanize the population towards joining the enemies of the US, helping the Khmer Rouge attain power.

Later on, in 1979 when the re-united Vietnam attacked the Khmer Rouge, both the US and China condemned the actions of the Vietnam liberators, and helped defend the Khmer Rouge from international opinion (since Vietnam was being supported in this by the USSR). The US sent lawyers to defend Pol Pot himself from the tribunals in the newly liberated Cambodia, and both China and the US helped keep Khmer Rouge affiliates on the UN seat for Cambodia until 1993. Of course, China went further and launched a retaliatory war against Vietnam for their liberation of Cambodia.

You also seem to be greatly minimizing the US involvement in many of these places. The US occupied Nicaragua for 20 years, installed a military dictatorship that ruled it for 50 years, and then trained, armed and directed guerillas that killed and tortured hundreds of thousands of civilians to try to stop the revolution that took down the Somoza dictatorship. Much of the rest of South America saw similar treatment from the US: coups taking down socialist popular movements and installing military dictatorships instead, then supporting violent militias if counter-revolutions started.

In the middle east, while many of the problems started with the British handling of the collapse of the Ottoman empire, and the USSR also led brutal wars of oppression, the US has picked up the torch in the last 30 or so years as the major source of strife in the region. They are responsible for:

- arming and training the Taliban

- installing Saddam Hussein in power, arming him, and directing him to attack Iran, even accepting his use of chemical warfare

- squashing Iran's brief democracy under Mossadegh, installing a military dictatorship under the Shah, starting the Iran Nuclear Weapons program, arming them (and then losing control to the islamic revolution)

- funding and arming Saudi Arabia and allowing it to spread its demented form of islamic fundamentalism, supporting even as we speak their invasion of Yemen

- supporting the Israeli apartheid state, illegal nuclear weapons arsenal, and illegal occupation of Palestinian territories

- invading Afghanistan in 2001 and killing thousands in the process, causing the deaths of as many as 100,000 civilians overall in the conflict

All of these things are adequately accounted for in my previous post except one which I find laughable every time I hear it, and provides sufficient evidence to me that you are an ideologue not concerned with realistic representations of history or current political events.

>Israeli apartheid state

Apartheid states do not let the oppressed class have massive representation in their representative government at all levels.

They do not have members of the oppressed class sit on the bench of the highest court in the land.

They do not mandate, at a federal level, that ALL state enterprise MUST have a member of the oppressed class on their board of directors.

They do not consistently have individuals from the oppressed class as cabinet members.

They do not have ambassadors belonging to the oppressed class.

They do not have members of the oppressed class as some of the highest ranking generals in their military, or as commanders of, hilariously, the border police.

Members of the oppressed class in apartheid states do not have the highest standard of living and quality of life compared to members of the same religious and ethnic groups in the region.

Apartheid states do not bend over backwards to accommodate, preserve, and enable the cultural and religious practices of the oppressed class, even when its members openly call for the genocide of the predominant ethnic group in the locale, refuse to participate in coalition governments, and reinforce sectarian, segregationist cultural policies and beliefs.

If you sincerely think Israel is an apartheid state, you are woefully uninformed, and a fool that has fallen for blatant propaganda.

The oppressed minority are not Arab citizens of Israel, they are the citizens of the Palestinian territories, whose property (and sometimes even lives) are considered expandable by Israeli authorities, who routinely destroy or seize these.

Israel is very obviously leading a campaign to eradicate the Palestinian population and take their land without taking the people.

They are violating all two-state solution guarantees through their obviously illegal settlements. And they do not want to simply occupy the Palestinian territories and go for a single-state solution, because that would leave Palestinian Arabs a majority (or at least extremely large minority) of the population, which contradicts the dream of an Isareli state controlled by God's chosen people.

All of your examples of how the minority Arab citizenry of Israel is treated well are entriely irrelevant, and if you know anything about the history of calling Israel an apartheid state, by people like Noam Chomsky, you would definitely know this, so I can only assume you are arguing in bad faith.

Palestinian Arabs are exactly who I'm describing in the previous examples. They are free to become Israeli citizens at any time and those are the positions they end up in when they do.

Palestine has rejected every two state solution proposed for the last half century. You're regurgitating ignorant nonsense. The ruling parties and majority population of Palestine are VOCALLY genocidal when it comes to the Jews, but you'd rather ignore that and accuse Israel of subversively carrying out a genocide against people it has in its highest levels of government. Then you have the audacity to accuse ME of bad faith. How many Jews are in Palestinian leadership positions?

I couldn't care less what Noam Chomsky says or thinks on this subject, he's one of the worst ultracrepidarian clowns in contemporary history.

And yet, despite this enlightened love of Israel for its Palestinian citizens, Israel is one of the developed nations of the world, while Palestine (the Gaza Strip and West Bank) live in squalor, are blockaded with not even the Red Cross being allowed to freely bring medicine in, and have to endure planned bombardments from Israel whenever a terrorist attack happens, all while their land is taken away by colonists flying the Israeli flag.

How exactly do you square this circle?

> Palestine has rejected every two state solution proposed for the last half century.

This is twisting history. UN resolutions for a two-state solution have always been approved by Palestine, with the USA being the veto against them. The idea of recognizing the state of Israel has been accepted by Palestinian leadership since the 1970s. But, the specific proposals that have usually been on the table have been almost universally laughable: taking away even more of Palestinian territory, limited access to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, limited access between the two halves of the Palestinian state and many other issues.

Not to mention, almost all of these negotiations were "arbitrated" by Israel's single biggest ally in the world, the USA. This would be as if you'd expect peace talks between Ukraine and the Donetsk separatists arbitrated by Russia to go well.

> They are free to become Israeli citizens at any time and those are the positions they end up in when they do.

And looking a little bit into this, it's amazing you can claim this, as the truth is precisely the opposite. 90% of the Arabic population of Palestine before the war did not qualify to become Israeli citizens. Now, not only do they not have any special right to become Israeli citizens, they don't even have the right to enter the country, even if they have a spouse or property there, unless they meet some other conditions.

By contrast, any person of Jewish decent or that converts to Judaism has the right to become a citizen of Israel with minimal other conditions. They will also likely receive property from the JNF if they wish to settle in Israel.

You're not just ignorant, you're willfully lying. None of the things in your last post are true.

The PA and Hamas have repeatedly rejected two state solutions, refuse to recognize Israel, and openly call for genocide.

You failed to answer my question too. This discussion over

Two things can simultaneously be true: (1) the US is not a very moral or just nation, especially with how it has used its military power & (2) the US is a more moral and just nation than China, especially with how they use military power.

This isn't a whataboutism equivalency. It is a statement that one needs to first be honest about ones own shortcomings before disparaging another.

> absolutist surveillance state

I'm pretty sure that neither Google nor the rest of the world is thrilled about NSA warrantless mass surveillance programs.

> is currently participating in genocide, has institutionally striven to sustain an ethnostate

State supported ethnic cleansing of Native Americans in the 19th century. State supported subjugation and murder of African Americans in... well, improving, but still counting.

> exercises extrajudicial imprisonment and execution...

Extraordinary rendition, indefinite detention, and torture in third party countries and at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

> ... against vast swaths of the population to preserve political power

20th century voting rights struggles, in which African Americans were systemically disenfranchised with the goal of preserving white political and economic power.

---

I'm a proud American, support the use of the US military on the global stage as a force for increasing moral good in the world, and consider the Chinese model of authoritarianism incompatible with the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness owed to every human. I believe the US holds individual freedom and equality before the law as much higher ideals, and delivers on them more often and fully, than China does.

But there's a reason Martin Luther King Jr. talks about "self purification" as one of the three prerequisite steps before direct action, and it's because easy hatred corrupts true justice.

Enumerating the ways in which your opponent looks like you, and the ways in which you've fallen short of your own ideals, isn't an argument for inaction, but a clarification and sharpening of action. 1960s racial injustice in the United States provided an embarrassing talking point while the US lectured the USSR on individual freedom. Using the evil that another does as justification for righteousness requires first accepting the evil that one has done.

You're belittling the Soviet Union's gulags when you describe 1960's racial injustices. The difference, if you can't register, is the the latter nation has the civilized means for progressing its justice through political means. It's astonishing how negligent this basic truth is when doing nation-state comparisons over the last century.

> The difference, if you can't register, is the the latter nation has the civilized means for progressing its justice through political means.

I guess that's why they called it the Civil War?

To restore the peace, rather than assemble a tower of corruption for it to horridly implode, yes.

“Protect themselves from the US military”.

They wouldn’t need protection but for reneging on Hong Kong, threats to Taiwan, taking over Tibet, or their Ughyur re-education camps?

The USA stole tech from the British Empire when the US was trying to build itself up. This is just the natural order of things, and I'm very anti-China and very pro-Taiwan.

Industrial espionage is different from ignoring IP laws. I would be fine with China doing away with IP as a concept, but that’s not what their doing.

I don’t support the Chinese government due to their active genocide along with the horrific subjugation of the population, but it’s a judgement on a case by case basis.

The US invented the modern concept of intellectual property law. It didn't exist beforehand so its inaccurate and disingenuous to claim that they stole anything from anyone.

OK so they pulled up the drawbridge behind them once they were in a good position. Masterfully done...

> The USA stole tech from the British Empire when the US was trying to build itself up.

The US contributed as much new, prominent technology to the industrial revolution as any other nation. A quick trip down the list of prominent US inventions of the era nicely demonstrates that. There's no foundation to claim that the US stole more technology than Britain did going the other direction. It's a Reddit-knowledge bumper sticker claim that is almost exclusively utilized in threads like this one, and is never substantially supported in discussion (because it's exceptionally difficult to prove that US technology theft was meaningfully out of line with what eg major European economic powers were doing during the industrial revolution).

The fact is that the US industrial revolution began with an act of industrial espionage against the UK. That the US did end up contributing to the industrial revolution is neither here nor there, as it's also true that China is contributing meaningfully to the technological advancement of humanity now as well.

This is a standard case of one rising power coming up agains the incumbent. They'll do what they have to do to catch up, just as you did what you had to do ~150 years ago. Saying that, I hope China isn't ultimately successful due to their total disregard for human rights, but getting all bent out of shape over this trade secrets stuff is silly.

I'd love to read some case studies where Chinese courts uphold the IP rights of foreign companies.

In the first half of 2019, foreign companies won 68% of their cases in the Beijing IP court.[0] Foreign companies are much more often plaintiffs than defendants, though the balance is supposedly shifting (Chinese companies are becoming more assertive about their own IP rights).

An example: John Deere has won judgments against a bunch of Chinese companies that used similar names to it.[1]

0. https://www.ccpit-patent.com.cn/node/11255

1. https://www.kwm.com/en/cn/knowledge/insights/final-judgment-...

Thanks. I'd be curious to know about the context of the cases of foreign companies winning IP lawsuits in China.

How much media do you see around shitting on India for their IP stance?

A lot, especially in pharma. I expect if their economy was anywhere near China it would be even more.

> IP law is what it is, but you can make very good arguments that it (esp patents) doesn't actually help society at large, and that it shouldn't exist in its current form. I think you'll find a lot of people on HN who would back that.

Software patents generally suck and most IP laws grant monopoly for too long.

But also, some IP law is needed. I'd be willing to bet 90+% of HN would sign on to that.

> Somehow when it comes to China, people grab for any excuse to criticize them and "stealing tech" is one of them

I'd rather they not be relaxed for the express purpose of sharing technology and methods with an authoritarian government that promotes itself as the US's rival. Again, I'd be willing to bet most of HN would cosign that.

I'm always really frustrated by comments that are like "HN/group always says X but now they're saying Y! So inconsistent!" Like it's somehow mandatory to completely disregard context and degree when forming opinions. It's not. You can say no to sex with someone without committing to celibacy.

I'd be perfectly comfortable showing up on capital Hill and yelling that Biden shits his pants, but I would not be comfortable showing up in Beijing calling Xi Winnie the Pooh. It's ok if that informs my level of comfort supporting the technological progression of the respective institutions.

> As for some professor getting paid, tech profs can be a pretty hot commodity, so it's not in itself surprising that a prof is making big bucks teaching people about his subject and perhaps also introducing his network.

Tons of professors make good money. Great money. That has nothing to do with why this guy is in the news.

There’s a massive legal and societal infrastructure built up around controlling access to information: patents, copyright, trademarks, libel, “cancelling”, obscenity, non-disclosure, trade secrets, security clearances, professional licensing, peer review.

China is a threat to this to the extent they can build up a second independent system that rivals it.

As far as I can tell, the issue is specifically about making false statements. Lieber was involved NIH funding, and as part of that had to disclose any foreign links, so being involved in thousand talents counts.

It’s unclear to me whether there would have been any issues or failure to obtain funding if Lieber had identified himself as associated with Wuhan University of Technology and with the Thousand Talents as the indictment claims he should have.

Of course the case has opened the doors for the ubiquitous “China bad” vs “China good” culture war

Disclosure of funding is kind of important for academic research, as money can influence results.

If there’s nothing fishy going on, then why lie about it when asked?

It is absolutely a threat if it can be weaponized. It’s also a threat to give an authoritarian country that has every ambition to become the global superpower, our scientific discoveries. Let’s be real, what info is China sharing with us? Or is it really about China amassing information and not really about sharing at all?

when country A inserts itself into the affairs of country B, especially internal structures like the academic establishment, that is a material threat to country B no matter how you slice it. if enough influence is gained on the part of country A then it becomes an existential threat and so keeping these kinds of things to a minimum is an objectively high priority for any country that wants to preserve itself. There are no two countries that can trust each other completely because the global geo-political landscape is always changing and changing in unpredictable ways. what is absurd is your juvenile understanding of international affairs, history and game theory.

Because China doesn't share its state of the art research with everyone else. If you want to lose, share everything and expect nothing in return.

> If you want to lose, share everything and expect nothing in return.

Interesting philosophy from someone with their open source projects on their profile...

That open source experience was what led me to this new life philosophy.

The Thousand Talents Plan is a transparent attempt by the CCP to accumulate economic and military power. It isn't bad because "China," it's bad because it increases the power of an authoritarian, imperial-minded, genocidal government.

How this is not blatantly the issue blows my mind. I guess CCP international propaganda campaigns are working.

It is a part of the industrial policy of China that broadly raises living standard and wealth of the society. It also opens up the Chinese society for foreign influence and sends millions abroad for studies.

The idea that this is to "increase the power of the CCP" is only true in sense that economic growth may increase the ruling party's popularity. In classic dictatorship thinking sending your best students abroad and accepting foreign educators is the last thing you would want to do.

Sending your best abroad while you hold their family at gunpoint locally is how you cultivate absolute loyalty and subvert adversarial thought and nations. The best way to defeat your enemy is to understand them.

That's why you consistently see Chinese born, US citizens with decades of time in the states prosecuted for espionage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_spy_cases_in_t...

> It is a part of the industrial policy of China that broadly raises living standard and wealth of the society.

I agree. It doesn't contradict what I said, though. Both are true.

> only true in sense that economic growth may increase the ruling party's popularity

No. It also gives them better weapons, AI, surveillance technology, etc. It literally increases their power, both abroad and within their borders.

CCP's popularity is guaranteed because it is criminal in China to tell negative truths about them. Their popularity is irrelevant because they have control over the entire country's military and surveillance networks. If they can intern and slaughter millions of Uyghurs, it's almost impossible for a rebellion to overthrow them.

They don't need this program for popularity.

I agree with the authoritarian part, but "imperial-minded"? How many countries has China invaded in the last 20-30-40 years? How many has the USA?

Not trying to use a "what-about-it" argument; I'm worried about China, but in terms of imperialism I'm much more worried about the USA, so I'm not sure if I prefer China stealing IP or the USA keeping that IP.

(An an aside, and mostly because I'm curious: are you from the USA? I feel like many people in the USA don't realize that in most countries the USA foreign policy isn't seen as something more virtuous than China...on the contrary, it's usually seen as worse. The USA's internal policy (human rights, democracy) is seen as better though)

Notice that I said the CCP is imperial-"minded" and not necessarily imperial yet. We should hope that they don't try to take more territory after Hong Kong and (likely) Taiwan, but we should also be afraid that they will -- as we should be afraid of any nuclear power, including the US, doing the same.

> in terms of imperialism I'm much more worried about the USA

The US hasn't added/conquered territory since 1947, and it hasn't acquired a large, populated territory since 1898[1]. Whatever you want to call US foreign policy (certainly disastrous in the 20th century and early 21st), it's not imperial in the traditional sense of conquest and annexation.

> How many countries has China invaded in the last 20-30-40 years? How many has the USA?

The US hasn't unilaterally invaded any country since Panama in 1989[2]. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are horrific human rights disasters and unforgivable crimes, but they were not what I would call imperial. You may disagree.

China is in the process of taking over Hong Kong, and they already occupy Tibet, parts of Nepal, and parts of India[3]. They have shown aggression on many disputed borders in the last few years, and they have increased their naval presence in many parts of the world.

We should expect to see Taiwan annexed in the future, per Xi himself, although it's hard to know when or how they'll do it[4].

> in most countries the USA foreign policy isn't seen as something more virtuous than China...on the contrary, it's usually seen as worse. The USA's internal policy (human rights, democracy) is seen as better though

I am from the US and I do realize this. US foreign policy is certainly worse and more deadly than China's, but (as I've said in other comments) the US is not actively taking over new territory.

The two main differences are:

- US foreign policy trajectory is toward fewer wars, partly because we are a democracy and citizens are extremely against starting new wars now; Chinese policy is in the direction of aggression

- the US is not a dictatorship capable of ethnic genocide (at least in the modern era)

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_territorial_acqu...

2. https://www.thoughtco.com/american-involvement-wars-colonial...

3. https://theprint.in/theprint-essential/not-just-india-tibet-...

4. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/11/china-taiwan-inv...

> It isn't bad because "China," it's bad because it increases the power of an authoritarian, imperial-minded, genocidal government

You’re literally repeating the “China bad” argument

I’m not going to argue that the CCP is benign. But either the thousand talents program is specifically harmful in some way, or you’re against it because “China bad”. And you appear to be arguing the latter.

My opinion of thousand talents is it’s an attempt to reverse brain drain. I personally know a Chinese immigrant with a green card who was struggling to find funding for some kind of cancer research here in the states, then found funding working as a regional thousand talents back in China and now runs some lab or startup or something in Anhui.

Of course, hiding funding and income is another matter altogether.

> You’re literally repeating the “China bad” argument

The CCP is not China. China is not the CCP. China is not bad and Chinese people are not bad.

The CCP is, unequivocally, one of the most evil and dangerous organizations in the history of humankind. With enough technology, it will be literally impossible to organize a rebellion against them and return China to something like democracy. It will be like `1984` (and is not far off from that type of dystopia even today).

With enough military power, they can annex more and more countries, and no one will be able to stop them. Hong Kong and Taiwan are templates for the future.

> But either the thousand talents program is specifically harmful in some way, or you’re against it because “China bad”. And you appear to be arguing the latter.

I was very clear why I was against it. It's explicitly a program to exfiltrate scientific knowledge (which translates into military, surveillance, and economic power) from non-authoritarian countries to an authoritarian one.

The US has its share of horrific history, and I wish it weren't so powerful and dangerous, but I am always opposed to power flowing from a democratic country to an authoritarian one.

> My opinion of thousand talents is it’s an attempt to reverse brain drain. I personally know a Chinese immigrant with a green card who was struggling to find funding for some kind of cancer research here in the states, then found funding working as a regional thousand talents back in China and now runs some lab or startup or something in Anhui.

I'm not going to argue that nothing good comes of this program. The problem with regimes like the CCP is that they abuse well-intentioned people, and they use a façade of "for the people" to do things that are purely for themselves.

As I said above: I'm much much more worried about the USA invading my country than China invading my country.

The "they can annex more and more countries" is pure speculation (besides the obvious case of Taiwan). Do you think they'll annex Thailand? Vietnam? Russia? Japan?

>The US has its share of horrific history, and I wish it weren't so powerful and dangerous, but I am always opposed to power flowing from a democratic country to an authoritarian one.

I agree that the CCP is dangerous, but the foreign invasion is a really poor argument, both because there's no evidence that China will invade other countries (again, besides the obvious Taiwan case) and because the USA has invaded multiple countries in the past 50 years...with horrific consequences to the population

China is bad and that context is important.

Right but there’s a difference between “X is bad because China is the one doing X” and “X is bad for reasons A, B, C that would also apply if it were not China doing X”

> “X is bad for reasons A, B, C that would also apply if it were not China doing X”

Reasons A, B, and C can (and should) acknowledge the beneficiary of the thing that is being done.

If the beneficiary is power-hungry and genocidal, that is a valid reason for "thing" to be a bad idea.

Similarly, it's better for, let's say, Norway to become a nuclear power than for North Korea to become a nuclear power.

The accumulation of military power by a non-aggressive democracy is less dangerous than by an authoritarian regime that has shown recent interest in conquest.