Chinese Intellectual Property Acquisition Tactics Exposed

hackingbear writes "In an interview published in Sina.com.cn, Chinese rail engineers gave a detailed account of the history, motivation, and technologies behind the Chinese high-speed rail system. More interestingly, they blatantly revealed the strategies and tactics used in acquiring high-speed rail tech from foreign companies (Google translation of Chinese original). At the beginning, China developed its own high-speed rail system known as the Chinese Star, which achieved a test speed of 320km/h; but the system was not considered reliable or stable enough for operation. So China decided to import the technologies. The leaders instructed, 'The goal of the project is to boost our economy, not theirs.' A key strategy employed is divide-and-conquer: by dividing up the technologies of the system and importing multiple different technologies across different companies, it ensures no single country or company has total control. 'What we do is to exchange market for technologies. The negotiation was led by the Ministry of Railway [against industry alliances of the exporting countries]. This uniform executive power gave China huge advantage in negotiations,' said Wu Junrong, 'If we don't give in, they have no choice. They all want a piece of our huge high speed rail project.' For example, [Chinese locomotive train] CRH2 is based on Japanese tech, CRH3 on German tech, and CRH5 on French tech, all retrofit for Chinese rail standards. Another strategy is buy-to-build. The first three trains were imported as a whole; the second three were assembled with imported parts; subsequent trains contain more and more Chinese made parts."

Comments

Re:Savvy business dealings

[couchslug]

"It's no different than what the Indians, Japanese or Koreans would do."

China is no more an enemy than those countries, except to leftover American missionaries who fap to old Pearl S. Buck books and want to Christianize Asia.

The horny cult of Empire that drove US policy to meddle in Asia needs to die, and a superpower China should help put a stake through its heart. The US needs to feel limited and be compelled to restrain its goals and redirect its energies.

Westerners who fuck with China will get what their predecessors elsewhere got, which is "played by smarter people":

"Now it is not good for the Christian's health to hustle the Aryan
          brown,
For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles and he weareth the
          Christian down;
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of
            the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear: "A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the
              East."