Slashdot Mirror
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."
The laws at the central level are indeed improving (slowly), but there is pretty much no change for property owners who see much of their compensation pocketed by local government officials. My girlfriend's family is one such case. They agreed to a 500000RMB deal for their parcel and house on the city outskirts, but the local department in charge of distributing compensation would only release 200000RMB, less than half, telling them 200k is "enough" and that they "shouldn't be greedy", even though the department in charge of development made the deal for 500k. They have no recourse since there's no such thing as suing the government. The only way they could hope to get full compensation is if they had connections with higher level government officials (county or province level) who have the power to indict their subordinates. As to where the rest of the money went, you can take a look at party officials cruising around in Audi A8s and guess.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Google "china wind turbine", then come back and see if you want to revise your statement
moox. for a new generation.
Native speaker here also. It's in the 3rd paragraph in the 2nd section after the introduction titled "Open the door or close it?" The preceding context is "the decision to import foreign rail technology had already been made." The next sentence can be translated as "the intimations of the higher ups is that 'the development of the project should promote our economy, rather than promote their economy' and [those involved] should act upon considerations that are advantageous to China when acquiring these technologies."
The way it's worded doesn't cast those "higher ups" in a bad light (considering every country would prioritize their own economy), but I think it's not entirely unreasonable to also read that as an implicit request to achieve a balance in maximizing Chinese economic benefits while minimizing foreign economic benefits -- that would be the way I'd understand it if I were a shrewed political underling.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
> this is the difference between a state that has long term goals of improving it countr[y] vs.
> corporations that can't see beyond the next quarterly report.
***China is an elephant that can fly!***
This planet has never seen such an _economic_ rise, not post WWII Europe, not even 20th century USA with its post-war advantage of a devastated first world manufacturing base whilst its own plant was ascendant.
The USA's economic orthodoxy is that attenuated (save Tea Party, Rep. Ron Paul, right wing Republicans) laissez faire, minimal market regulation, minimal market interference, no industrial policy will lead to maximum national economic gains. Since Deng Xiaoping's 1972 market/China opening China has amalgamated Japan's MITI approach (industrial policy) with the West's form of capitalism. In essence they are _demonstrating_ that there is more than one form of capitalism. And their form kicks ass, to the chagrin of western economists and politicos. These Chinese market tactics are if not identical wholly descendant from 1980's Japan Golden Age[1].
BTW, contrary to your quote above, Japan is an economy legendary for putting the long term above ALL ELSE. Yet since 1990 Japan has been in an economic depression that shattered the once indomitable, invulnerable, invincible myth that once was a nation of "Samurai businessmen." I frankly am very surprised at how low Japan's business savvy has sunk. Once upon a time called the 1980s, Japan would do the same sort of thing as in the OP, it would diversify its supply of commodities (1.) to eliminate supplier supremacy and (2.) to achieve lower prices and (3.) gain influence. So, if it needed iron ore, copper ore, petroleum, aluminium, whatever it would set rival nation suppliers against one another---say, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Chile, the USA! whomever---for fractional supply quantities. Thusly, low economies of scale would lead to higher cost for Japan, initially, but no one supplier had a stranglehold on Japan. Two, Eventually suppliers would plead for bigger market shares with lower prices for the booming Japanese economy. Three, nations would enact laws beneficial to Japan, nations' indigenous corporations would lobby their governments for infrastructure projects in an effort to ingratiate themselves for future Japanese business or to supply the commodities needed for said infrastructure projects, etc. But now I see that Japan, like the rest of teh globe is a decade away from weaning themselves away from and is presently on bended knee kowtowing to China for rare earth exports. THAT! gentlemen would never have happened to the 1980s Japan. The master is getting tutored!
So I remind you that ***China is an elephant that can fly!***
The planet has never seen a nation rise from so low ECONOMICALLY to so high. Mind you the Middle Kingdom (China) is a nation of deep cultural depth. Reaching back millenia! They are not they were not ignorant not last century, not two three centuries ago either. Think of the Communist Party as the last in a succession of Emperors. China has had them all along its history, some have lasted centuries, some have lasted fifty to ninety years, some have not even been Chinese but barbarian. The communist nation is only sixty-two years old. Their modern ascendancy is thirty-nine years old. Will it last? Will it keep flying? Will the Chinese subsume their liberty to the Party for another sixty-two or thirty-nine years? Even Japan looked unstoppable. Once. It makes an omelet out of our American, western, libertarian, Tea Party, Austrian Economic school orthodoxy.
[1] "Dogs and Demons: tales for the dark side of Japan", Alex Kerr, 2001. A never seen analysis (by a long time nipponophile) in the western press on the cultural, economic, spiritual, ecological malaise of Japan.