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China Plans Domestic Software Quotas
October_30th writes "In order to fight the alleged Microsoft monopoly, the Chinese government is establishing quotas for foreign software. While the details are still unclear, the government may require that up to 70% of software on Chinese computers is produced domestically. Regulations like this are, of course, expected to come under fierce criticism from the WTO."
WASHINGTON--A federal judge has determined that Microsoft holds a monopoly in computer operating systems, strongly criticizing the company in a decisive statement that could signal the outcome of the landmark antitrust case.
Silly China, when will they learn that protectionist trade barriers cause depressions
Not being able to use sweatshops as much would greatly reduce the profit for companies that sell clothing :)
Like tariffs, quotas are used to protect domestic industry at the expense of foreign industries and more importantly consumers. They usually require this protection because they either have a poor product or a product that costs much more than their competetitor's. Preventing imports forces consumers to spend more than they normally would on the same good.
However in terms of software this may be a blessing for China. Linux's problem isn't price so much as it is marketing. However the real question is whether China will be able to use Linux or must they code their own O/S?
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
Software developed locally in the US vs that which is shipped off to India ? Congress critters trying to change legislation on H1B? Am I trolling ? They're both quotas, one on workers and the other on software (their product).
How exactly is demanding American workers be given preferential treatment for IT jobs different from a market in a country putting a quota on foreign software?
Neither one of those is right, but some people in those countries want both to happen. Having said that, this could be the shot in the arm that the Chinese need to boost their own development of software. Just hope that it won't become an inefficient beast due to lack of competition from outside their own country.
It is pretty hard to pin a country on Linux (or *BSD) these days. They are pretty much children of the world (including China). I wonder if the Chinese Goverment will take this into consideration when establishing its quotas...
This will just backfire on them. Irregardless of whether this is designed to reduce Microsoft's monopoly, a quota that restricts the use of ALL foreign software is going to have a negative impact on China's ability to advance their economy.
It will help local software companies, but there will probably be no net gain to the nation as a whole. When you restrict the ability for domestic companies to use foreign software (especially when it is the best tool for the job) you are handicapping economic growth.
Doesn't China remind you of a budding United States?
Oh sure China has some problems but do did the USA. Do i need to mention slavery?
I really do hope the Chinese make the world into a better place. The laws they make benefit their own people! How revolutionary.
While the USA gives jobs away for a fast buck.
go figure. who is more corrupt?
This is a bullshit argument.
You really have to put yourself into a Chinese man's shoes to understand. If a company goes overseas and offers you a job that pays $0.70/h, 12 hours a day, in a tiny little hot room, there's no way you would do it, right?
Not necessarily. Getting $0.70/h may be a blessing if the alternative is making $0.40/h for a domestic company, or more likely not working at all. We can only assume that because this Chinese man freely accepts the job that no other better alternatives exist. To remove this job opportunity for him may make us feel morally superior, but it won't help him put food on the table.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
I'd wager that their domestic software industry will do well, but their domestic industry as a whole will not.
Why?
Ok, limiting software that people can use limits people's choices (obvious), but it also removes the ability for people to choose the absolute, best software they need to do their job. Consequently, you'd have to make some purchasing decisions which might actually affect the ability of your company to do work. Imagine how a video post production house trying to get by without AfterEffects, Flame, 3D Max, Maya - you get the picture.
The only way they could possibly circumvent this is by loading their machines up with 70% worth of crap they don't want - hey ho, I think I've found the solution!!
then why do you USians whine so much when IT-jobs move to india? I'm sure they'd stay if you lazy bastards did them for $0.70/h.
So I guess they won't be using Linux or OpenOffice then.
This could be one of those rare cases where the enemy of my enemy is not my friend.
I agree with much of what you said except:
"While other countries respect trade laws at the expense of their workers, industry and economy, why should China be allowed to be any different?"
The whole point of trade is that it isn't an expense. It's the only 'free lunch' there is in economics. If Japan were to put up big barriers to US imports, the US would be MUCH worse off by putting up barriers to Japanese imports.
Protectionist policies hurt everybody, except for a minority of grossly inefficient competetitors interested in keeping their profits high by exploiting consumers through tariff legislation.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
if the average USian made $0.70/h, cost of living would drop.
Yessir, I love it when people discriminate like that. Nobody screams about enforced quotas for US Government jobs and contracts, but let a foreign government demand a quota on something as simple as software, and look out! Love double standards! Love 'em to death!
I heavily doubt this claim, but even if it were true China also has record GDP growth. They may lose a million manufacturer jobs, but if they gain 2 million service jobs they're sitting pretty.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
This is an explanation, not a suggested course of action. It may seem an 'unfair' disparity, but any attempt to legislate against such 'unfairness' will ultimately make things even more unfair.
One such 'suggestion' is tarrifs. This will undoubtedly put millions of Chinese laborers out of work, and will also drive up the price of the good that consumers pay. The only 'benefit' is allowing a domestic competetitor to overcharge their customers. That is what I would call unfair. Even if x number of Americans become unemployed I can guarantee they will be infinitely better off than if 100x Chinese are unemployed.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
China has to be very careful about proposing legislation that will get knocked down by the WTO. The Chinese are very sensitive to reproachment by other countries and international organizations. I don't know how they will react if the WTO finds them guilty of violating WTO agreements and fines them billions of dollars.
If China believes it has the capacity to create a powerful software industry, it should get out of its way rather than remove incentive for them to compete.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
If they're importing stuff, their economy suffers if they're not exporting more than they're importing. Currently this is the case with things, but to say that you're handicapping economic growth by not importing things, implies you know very little about how economics works.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Every Government treats people as beasts of burden; The USA government too, they just hide it under labels like those talking about the land of freedom and false patriotism. The first Matrix movie could be understood as a really not so subtle metaphor of our reality, the machines/governments/companys are big monsters that we fed, and they keep us worm and enchanted with virtual crap like tv, confort and hotmail. Then they transformed the movie into a virtual crap that they used to feed what is left of our controlled mind ...
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
the government may require that up to 70% of software on Chinese computers is produced domestically.
I see a great opportunity here for some clever Chinese student to make a fortune...
Write and sell a fairly cheap (whatever would compare to USD$20?) set of a few thousand "utility" programs, that do basically nothing (such as "print-a", which "inserts the ASCII character 0x41 into the standard output stream, for use in automated scripting requiring the letter 'A'", as an example of what I mean), but absolutely guarantee that a company can remain in compliane with this quota no matter how much imported US software they use.
The only problem involves the definition of "percent" as relating to software - Does it mean "per 100 packages" or "per 100 bytes"? If the latter, a similar approach would work (such as "lib-a", which fills exactly 70% of your hard-drive with readily-accessible "A" characters), but would certainly seem a lot more wasteful of a large HDD...
Don't have any doubts.. I live in the border town of McAllen, TX (actually we are not really on theborder, but about 10 min. from it). Reynosa (which is the city on the Mexican side of the border) was losing a lot of works because the "maquiladoras" were leaving. Since about a year, maybe more maybe less, a lot of companies are coming back. Some cities on this side of the river, like Mcallen, Pharr, etc. are helping Reynosa, because lots of money comes also their way.
While the details are still unclear, the government may require that up to 70% of software on Chinese computers is produced domestically.
implies that they plan to issue a general nationwide ban on too much foreign software. However, that's not what the article says. It actually says:
Officials say a new law will be announced by this summer requiring a minimum percentage of software purchased by the government be produced in China.
So we see that this policy would only apply to government purchases. Thus, this is little different from when a corporate IT department standardizes on choosing certain software products and not others.
The U.S. federal and state governments also promote a variety of policies by placing extra conditions on their procurements and contractors.
So, while this is somewhat interesting, this doesn't look to me like as big a trade issue as a lot of posts seem to be making of it.
If the Chinese were doing something illegal wrt to clothing, the most likely of which would be dumping products in US markets, then the US would likely appeal to the appropriate trade organization and ask the practice to stop. This might result in tariffs placed on China and theoretically increase sales of US domestic products in that category.
The interesting thing is that MS claims it is not a monopoly, and the prices it charges are determined by a competitive market and are generally the cheapest it can sell the products for and still make a profit. If we accept this as fact, and look at the deep discounts offered to in certain US and non-US markets, it appears that in fact MS is dumping product, a practice that is defined as unacceptable under many treatise.
We therefore have a situation in which MS is a monopoly and charges arbitrary prices not controlled by the free market, or it is the habit of dumping product onto certain markets, with the assumed intention of destroying competition. In either case, the action warrants defensive measures to protect those markets.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Monopoly is a definable term, based on a companies market share. Microsoft is a monopoly in the PC operating systems market. If you think that's up for debate, you're nuts!
Monopolists have certain powers over a free market, that competitive players don't. If they abuse these powers, then they are breaking the law. But just being a monopoly itself is not necessarily illegal.
It is not a journalistic error to call Microsoft a monopoly. Being a monopolist means you "won" the game of capitalism. But since the benefits of capitalism come about only from the "game", it's always a good idea to keep an eye on them monopolists.
would greatly reduce the profit
This is a classic cop-out, naive argument that is all too common in globalization/offshoring discussions -- it's all simplified down to the man doing this to fatten his wallet on the backs of poor foreigners. It's never about the customer selecting the made-in-china $5 item over the comparable $7 made-in-usa item, or about the company that starts manufacturing overseas when the only other option is bankruptcy. It's never about the rapid ascent of material-quality-of-living that we've enjoyed in the Western world as a result of globalization (hell DVD players are like $49 CDN now).
Get a more realistic perspective -- know thy enemy. This naive nonsense spouted about globalization only makes the speaker look like another clueless WTO protester just latching onto a cause.
The problem is the jobs in the US were still dropping whereas most of the rest of the western world suffered the job losses at the dot-com kaboom in '99-'01, and are now going strong.
In any case, the budget deficit is the much more worrying matter. Maybe not to you, but your children.
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
Its interesting to note how slashdot user opinions change overtime. A few years back, capitalism and freedom were reigning supreme. Such protectionist policies werent really appreciated anywhere.
.... wouldnt it be better if americans would be courageous to just compete with the best of the rest and take head on their strengths? .. that is the freedom that 'you' championed.
The US was the champion of capitalism, sometimes even arm twisting countries into opening their markets. Those that did so were endowed lavishly with grants and loans. Of course, opening markets and free economies lead to more social freedom too which would be better in the longer term.
But then, perhaps the US forgot the implications of free competition on their own economy. Suddenly americans want protectionist legislations. Outsourcing is the top-demon.
Ahh
Well
Now when you look at what is happening in america, china and maybe what will happen in many other countries, are we going back to a milder version of socialism?
Disclaimer: I would have never been against protectionism for the sake of protecting jobs in any country. But then you worked so hard at doing away with that system. You promoted competition. Good. But dont get scared when it comes back at you!
Life is just a conviction.
Software cannot be a "basic social right." By definition, software must be created by someone. Someone must do work to create software. Therefore, software is a product for a consumer.
Free speech is a right. Software is a commodity.
--
http://nemilar.net - Not your grandmother's soup kitchen
I'm not saying that standards of living aren't lower, and yes, I'm glad I live in the UK and not Kenya, but perspective is required.
He made a bunch of very good points, even if some of them are inaccurate. He deserves the moderation. You deserve to be marked a troll for your pro-censorship stance.
Basic software services should be cheap, just like water, electricity and gas.
Water is not cheap -- neither is gas, nor electricity. Just ask the tens of millions of people who can't afford them.
Furthermore, ditto food -- not cheap, for the starving.
-kgj
-kgj
How is this different from every other WTO member including the US?
No matter how much I hate M$, protectionism always hurts the constituents that it endeavors to "protect". Shielding any industry from competition in any market, whether bounded geographically, politicaly or otherwise, will stifle innovation within that market and will disadvantage the companies and individuals that are "protected".
/. We are M$'s customers (well, many of us are) and we know we are being abused by a "monopoly". We don't need governments of nations, states, municipalities or otherwise to mandate the use of non-M$ technology. That would just create other monopolies. Those of us who feel the harm of M$'s monopolies will choose to avoid their products whenever possible.
The whole idea of anti-trust law is suspect for the same reason. Competition cannot be legislated. The best remedy for companies that abuse their customers the way M$ does is evident right here in the postings of
The invisible hand of the free market will remedy all such abuses more rapidly and more efficiently than any legislative or judicial remedies.
I'm sorry but this sounds too condescending. Why should Chinese programmers make lots of free, useless little utilities, when they can make perfectly good, if not better, software?
If there's one thing I understand, it's that Chinese people have a lot of discipline and pride in themselves. If given the chance, they will produce the best software.
This seems to me simply an incentive for Chinese software to catch up. Whether it is right or wrong, that is not my argument. My argument is simply that Chinese can produce good software. The question is... given a few years, will they need foreign software as much as they do now?
Commenting upon the quoted material:
Many Americans believe the clothing purchased in U.S. Wal-Mart stores is manufactured in America
I find this very difficult to believe, and I'd find it more credible if it were supported by some sort of factual statistic rather than the largely meaningless "many". I mean, it really isn't that difficult to look at the tags (which are accurate). I think a fairer statement is "Most Americans don't work in textiles, so they care more that their new bath robe is less expensive at WalMart than it is at Robetectionism".
Hypocritically, Wal-Mart ran a "Buy American" and "Buy Mexican" marketing campaigns simultaneously
How is this hypocritical? In Mexico it caters to the Mexican sense of protectionism, while in the US it caters to the US sense of protectionism. I don't think a "Buy American" campaign would go over as well in a foreign Walmart.
At any rate, the economics of sweat shops don't make sense. In the US the typical garment worker earns around $.25 per T-Shirt manufactured. That means we could double that person's salary by increasing the cost per T-Shirt by another $.25. Somehow I don't think that an extra quarter per T-Shirt is going to be a crippling economic disadvantage to you and me. Hell, we could double your example Chinese worker's salary at a cost of much less than $.25 per T-Shirt. How would this be a bad thing?
My point here is that there is no real economic reason for garment workers to be so economicly screwed. For those who are interested, here in the US a company called SweatX is producing quite nice clothing at prices comparable (maybe $.25 more per item) to other manufactureres. Look at their website here: SweatX
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
I agree that in the short term, globalization drops prices and thereby increases the standard of living... however, in the long term the labor force moves inexorably toward the area of least resistance... the lowest wages, the worst conditions, the least regulations. The idea is that unfettered capitalism will find a balance on its own, and in a way it will... maximizing profit by minimizing expensess... including the standard of living of those in its employee.
In other words, when people locally can't find work because it's legal for someone else to do it for seven cents an hour in another country under sweat-shop conditions, that $49 DVD player is even more out of reach to them than it was a few years ago when it was $299 and they were making 20K.
Still, the original speaker was talking about labor practices, not quotas and terrifs. I believe these 'solutions' may be too heavy-handed... by cutting out the opportunity for domestic companies to exploit cheap labor, they will find themselves at a large disadvantage to international companies who can. Either way, the rich westernized nations will lose because their standard of living is simply too far above the rest of the world to maintain without complete isolationism if these practices are allowed to continue.
Perhaps there is no way to keep a line in the sand between the haves and have-nots of today on an international scale. Still, this mass-employment of slave labor and sweat shop workers doesn't seem to bode well for the eventual average global standard of living that will emerge. I would argue that it would be in the international community's best interest to ban, not globalization, but these these practices of exploitation. Cheap labor is great for CEOs who want to squeeze a few more bucks out of their companies and make their investors happy at the same time, but it will only serve to internationally reduce the value of human labor itself.
From a more practical standpoint dictatorships are simply incompatiable with free nations. The free nation may be willing to suffer the existance of a dictatorship; but the existance of any free nation anywhere is a threat to the dictatorship. If a free nation exists the dictator's people can hope to escape there, can see that there really is an alternative. Simply by existing freedom is a threat to dictators. Naturally they will do whatever is in their power to destroy the free nation(s) if they can.
Additionally it is a historic fact that dictatorships are inherently unstable forms of government. The "funeral games" immediately following the death of the dictator can easily turn into war against neighboring nations. From a standpoint of simple self preservation free nations should do whatever they can to help pro-democracy movements in dictatorships overthrow the dictator. The fact that US policy (under presidents and congresses of all parties since around 1860) has been one of encouraging dictatorships is one of the most amazing examples of stupidity that I have seen in a very long time.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
The scenario pointed out does happen.
Indeed it does. But even if the drop in job-market participation is what's causing the changes in the unemployment rate, that doesn't make it the fault of the President. And I doubt that it's anywhere near accurate to put a single "reason" on anything that literally the sum total of tens if not hundreds of millions of individual decisions.
The parent and grandparent are both right, with more elaboration:
The parent is correct that if everyone earned 70c/hr, yet remained as product as they are now, the value of the dollar would be much higher, so the purchasing-power-parity in 2003 dollars would remain the same, and hence the "real" cost of living (in PPP 2003 USDs).
The grandparent is correct that if everyone *WERE* to earn 70c/hr, we would have a depression.
How can the parent and grandparent be correct? The fourth-dimension, time, the axis Mardy (Michael J Fox) wasn't very good at in Back to the Future, needs to be remembered. When experienced with RAPID deflation, which implies the power of the dollar increases rapidly, we enter an economy which is reluctant to make investments. The best investment, in a deflating curency, is to hold on to your bank notes or bonds, not to lend loans on houses that this year will cost $100k but if the owner forecloses five years from now will only fetch $20k of a much stronger greenback.
Thus, if we have rapid deflation, or sustained deflation, we will enter a depression where the financial elite close their purses and reap the rewards of monetary growth without making loans to those paupers we commonly refer to as ourselves.
I agree with you regarding our obligations as free citizens. But what are you proposing? Most of the greatest work done in third world countries is conducted by charity organizations, not by foreign 'aid.'
You are also correct regarding dictatorships and free nations. But I wasn't talking about voter rights or religious rights in my example. That Chinese person is free to choose the jobs he is offered. The government can step in and disrupt this (and they used to) but it perpetuated China's lingering poverty. Despite living under a dictatorship, the choice of jobs still remains (but not political ones of course).
I also suspect that over the long run, as Chinese people become more and more prosperous, they will become more intelligence, which is the true sword again depotism. The US should play no part in this overthrow. At best, it draws massive international scrutiny. At worst, it results in horrific warfare and thousdans of deaths, which will no doubt happen if the US went to war with China.
The best course of action is to just keep trading with China. As they become more prosperous they will find their own ways of undermining the regime.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
Right. I'll take this a lot more seriously when the WTO starts throwing fits about the well documented abuses of Microsoft's own monopoly power in the marketplace. Until then, it seems a bit hypocritical of the WTO to be barking about -- fundamentally -- Microsoft being victimized by a the presence of an uneven playing field.
The Chinese appear to be acting unilaterally in what they perceive as their best interest. Maybe they're just following the U.S. lead.
I honestly believe the rule of international law is an important value, but also believe the U.S. could stand some introspection on this very same point. And as for Microsoft, I can't tell that the company has learned anything from its run-in with the Justice Department, except for how to be sneakier in extending its monopoly, a reinforced appreciation for the power of public perception, and perhaps a clearer understanding of why it's worthwhile to donate generously to politicians who don't believe that the power of large businesses should in any way be restrained.
This isn't unique to North America. It happens all over the globe, England included. Such is the nature of living languages.
Looking at this on a purely analytical level, this is a bad idea. I mean, how do they plan to enforce it? the 70% figure... how do they measure it? Bytes? Can you cheat the system by writing a 3 line VB script that includes 100 megs of high-res .tiff files?
:)
Obviously, they can't go by lines of code with closed source systems.
Ultimately this could backfire and cause the computer industry there stagnate as
A) companies spend time writing applications that they don't need to write in order to maintain quotas. It would be better for Chinese coders to spend time writing code that actually needs to be written and
B) it means people actually need to worry about software was written. That requires a lot more information and checking. Chinese OEMs, VARs, etc, are going to have to spend a lot of time (read: money) on figuring out where all this code comes from.
Any time you add an "unnatural" regulation, you're creating a lot of expenses beyond what it would cost simply to comply by forcing people to figure out if they're complying.
A "natural" regulation is something like "don't drive over 75mph" or "you must add iodine to salt if you produce it". It's obvious if you're driving over 75, and it's obvious if you're adding iodine to your salt. Pretty much any taxation would be an example of an "unnatural" regulation. It's natural to simply give the person all the money for the job they do, and it takes a lot of work to figure out how much you owe in taxes. And it creates a huge infrastructure (and cost) in collecting and enforcing those taxes.
Of course, it's a gradient, but I'd say this requirement is pretty unnatural. How do they figure OSS with or without some Chinese contributors? What about code from US companies with outsourcing operations in China? It seems like a big mess to me.
One easy way to do it would be to require that 70% of licensing fees go to Chinese companies. It's pretty obvious who you're paying, and it would certainly accelerate the adoption of OSS in the middle kingdom
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Well if China can get away with this under the WTO's side, I hope some non pro-BigBusiness types can bring similar legislation up in the US. I for one, an unemployed IT worker at the moment, would welcome some kinds of protections on jobs for citizens who are highly motivated and skilled, but shut out of a labor force that has been moved overseas who don't have to pay for the cost of living I do.
Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. -Thomas Cardinal Wolsey
That's interesting since the US has one of the most liberal trade policies and,"ironically," the highest real GDP in the world. And, GDP has grown as trade has been futher liberalized.
And, your analysis about the WTO is interesting, since most economists would argue that smaller, poorer countries benefit the LEAST from the WTO (mostly because they can't fully take advantage of it, not because it's bad, but that's another argument...) For an empirical example, look at NAFTA - the US has benefited the most, meanwhile Mexico has benefited the least...
Saying that protectionism helps the economy is misinformed and violates the essence of capitalism. As someone else mentioned, go read up on comparative advantage. I can even give you a list of some good books on trade, if you're interested.
Oh, and those contries that "take our work?" We do get the advantage of cheaper costs of living - or rather, we would if the tariffs and other protectionist policies you advocate didn't drive prices up... The policies you advocate create the problems you whine about.
Its a favorite argument of the anti-outsourcing crowd to claim that all these companies are murdering themselves because their customers are the same as their employers, and if they outsource, the economy will go bad, and the company will lose all the money they save through outsourcing, and then some.
But what they forget is that the economy of the country they are outsourcing to is going to grow, and they can sell their products there. There's also the fact that A) not all their customers are going to lose their jobs, and B) Not all the people who lose their jobs are their customers. In most cases, income lost due to poor consumer confidence won't be more then the amount of money saved by outsourcing.
It should be obvious with the "jobless economy" that it's possible to have a good economy without a strong job market.
Don't like it? then vote for Kerry in November. I'm willing to put up with trade inequity if it means getting rid of bush. A good job market after I graduate collage is just a tasty bonus.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
As I assumed when reading original story, and as subsequent posts bear out.
WTO(World Trade Organisation) = USA.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
Basically China has immasculated the WTO, and I for one am sick of it. They want all the benefits but none of the costs of free trade.
You spelled "USA" wrong. The first letter isn't "C" and the middle part isn't "hin".
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Most fascists are capitalists, with a few socialist ideals thrown in for good measure. One just needs to look at Nazi Germany or Italian Fascism (circa mid 1900's). Germany, for instance, was driven by private entrepreneurs and capitalists (ever saw Schindler's List? You think he could have been successful* in a non-capitalist society).
The only difference between a country like USA and (Nazi) Germany was the following. USA is democratic and largely supports equality. Germany was not too democratic and did not support equality. Germany, like all fascist societies, was a hierarchial society with "Aryans" at the top. HOWEVER, IF you were "Aryan", you would see little difference (in capitalism) between USA and Germany. Scholars (read: capitalists) have remarked how Germany (circa 1940's) was VERY open and free (in terms of economics). It was a great time for (capitalist) entrepreneurs.
(* Strictly speaking, Schindler was not successful. BUT he definitely was wealthy. It can also be argued that he failed purposely to save the Jews).
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
Why do you keep whining about this? US goverment would pass similar law in the same situation required.
Note that this doesn't affect ALL software sold in China, only software used by goverment. It isn't suprising that when goverment buys stuff it tries to buy homegrow stuff.
Water cannot be a "basic social right." By definition, water must be purified by someone. Someone must do work to produce drinkable water. Therefore, water is a product for a consumer.
Although water costs money to clean and transport it is a basic social right to have access to it. It does not follow that something is a product for a consumer just because it takes work to be produced. We can commoditise things that cost money, examples would be water, public transportation and health care. Although all three cost money they have been commoditised to the point where they are free or affordable by all, and it's viewed as a social right to have them. The same can be true for software. Although it will take resources to produce and someone will have to pay, we can make it a commodity item, available to all regardless of social status. A precondition would of course be shelter, electricity and maybe internet, so perhaps that should a higher priority right now.
Yes, but it must only be created once and can be used millions of times afterwards.
Which is exactly the reason why software is not just another product that can be treated by the same laws like other products. It's fundamentally different and models that would fail miserably for most other products can turn out to be the best for software.
Because I would get sick and angry. The American govt. and many American institutions always talk in favour of free trade and try other nations to come into the WTO. But while talking like the biggest supporters of globalisation abroad (maybe because of jobs they talk different at home) the US has never been very supportive of free trade.
They only allow free trade when it serves their interest. This is not to say they are the only ones, because the EU also protects their markets wherever they can.
Only Americans seem to think that the US allows free trade, which it doesn't. The only countries that swallowed this load of crap and opened their boarders to foreign products were developing and least developed nations.
While the EU and the US heavily protect their markets (mainly through subsidies, 'cause they can afford to) in some areas China is now doing the same in other areas.
What China is doing is bad, but they are just following up on the example set by the US.
I suspect that China will be entirely unable to enforce any requirements that its software be Chinese-made. The streets of most Chinese cities are covered with small business people selling various qualities of pirated media ranging from burnt CDs, VCDs and DVDs with Hollywood's latest to pre-release versions of most popular programs. This disregard for software property rights, unsurprisingly, is mirrored in other products, the most incredible of which is a pirated car. This piracy problem is so pervasive, that I would be surprised if much software purchased by the government was legitimate. I suspect that this announcement is more of a political ploy than an actual policy statement.
"...What is good for General Motors is good for America." -Charles Wilson, Secretary of Defense and fmr President of GM