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GE Venture Will Share Jet Technology With China
vbraga writes "This week, during the visit of Chinese president Hu Jintao to the United States, GE plans to sign a joint-venture agreement in commercial aviation that shows the tricky risk-and-reward calculations American corporations must increasingly make in their pursuit of lucrative markets in China. GE, in partnership with a state-owned Chinese company, will be sharing its most sophisticated airplane electronics (NYT reg. required, reg.-free alternative here), including some of the same technology used in Boeing's new state-of-the-art 787 Dreamliner."
Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it... see: software piracy, high speed trains, stealth fighters, aircraft carriers. Up next: commercial aircraft!
I can't believe that GE is this stupid.
Would China owned companies share any of their military technology with us? We are are simultaneously the strongest and most soft-headed country in the history of the world. How come talk of globalization somehow only includes us selling our shiz off?
Yep. This is how the Chinese have been doing their technology transfer without needing to pay billions in R&D themselves.
They go to a company and tell them that they'd like to build some nuclear reactors or high speed trains or something. The deal they make always goes like:
1) We'll buy the first two nuclear plants.
2) The next two you build using our people.
3) The ones thereafter you give us the plans to build, and we'll do it all ourselves, and pay you a royalty.
Now China has the plans to the AP1000, one of the most modern nuclear plants being built today, as well as a trained workforce in building it, all without having to do any of the R&D work themselves, or pay much more than just the cost of a couple plants (which they get to use anyway).
It's a very clever idea, and companies are all falling over themselves to give away their best technologies to China, since they're so eager for short-term profits, they don't realize they're shooting themselves in the foot, long term.
Shouldn't that be late-of-the-art 787 Dreamliner
Also wasn't there a court case a while ago about Boeing getting the results of some industrial espionage into Airbus? Hasn't there been speculation that some of the Boeing problems were due to blind copying without knowing why parts of the most recent Airbus were designed that way? Are the Chinese really getting anything new that they couldn't get from elsewhere anyway?
Perhaps we might start demanding that every Chinese company wanting access to American markets must locate offices here, staff them with US workers, and share their technology in turn. We did that with the Japanese...
This is even more bone-headed a move than Boeing farming out airframe subassemblies. This is one of the few areas where we have a competitive advantage, and they're going to give it away so that they can sell a few more engines. I don't care if the rationale is that Rolls Royce, SNECMA, P&W, or if it's the price for lower labor costs at a PRC plantsite, or whoever will do it if "we" don't.
When a technology firm is selling off their IP, it's obvious that they are out of the business of developing new IP, and are just milking the efforts of their predacessors. What a sad sight.
Luke, help me take this mask off
"The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." -- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Considering it's success at meeting milestones, sharing the same technology used in Boeing's new state-of-the-art 787 Dreamliner will probably set the Chinese back 10 years.
I'm sure they say the same thing about us. Just swap "communist" with "capitalist" and "melamine in milk" with "trans fats in french fries."
Amoral business practices are not limited to a single culture or country.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
China is getting a great deal on this. Not only do they get investment, but they get the tooling and most importantly first-hand knowhow to build reliable high-performance jet engines. China has had lots of trouble mastering jet engines. They are very tricky to get right, especially for them to last a long time and not be replaced every 1000 hours. Apparently just because your net.agents stole the plans from poorly-secured GE desktops doesn't mean you actually know how to use the knowledge.
The unnamed state-owned company that GE will be giving money to isn't even identified in the article. This is because state-owned company means that it is an arm of the Chinese government. Americans unfamiliar with the Chinese SOE and searching for an American equivalent merely need think of GM: owned by the government and not so much worried with making profit as keeping workers employed and achieving national political objectives. These SOEs are a major part of the Chinese economy (even though "journalists" like to tell us that China has gone all capitalist now) and doing a JV (joint venture) with them is putting on lipstick and stockings and getting into bed with the government. Whatever happens next, you know you're getting fucked. We are all aware, of course, that under Chinese law JVs are required to be owned 51% by the Chinese partner? And that there is a long list of broken companies in the last ten years that went into JVs and ended up lying by the roadside, lipstick smudged and used condoms hanging out of their asses? Look up Danone vs. Wahaha for a well-known example. GE's slogan, "imagination at work", should serve it well as it goes shopping for lingerie and a nice water-based lube for the pleasure of its new Chinese husband.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
...think about the Q3 & Q4 results...they are going to be sweet! (remind me to short GE in 2014)
This reminds me of a couple books which I read decades ago... the first was a Red Scare book about the dangers of transferring technology, science, and business methods to the Soviet Union. It's still in print, probably a favorite of some of the talk radio crowd. The book took its title from a passage from an Elizabethan era political writer:
"Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason"
- Sir John Harrington
The other was a "Yankee Scare" book written by a Frenchman who sounded the alarm about American corporations buying their way to massive influence across Western Europe. "We are paying them to buy us", I remember the author saying.
I hope this does not work out like Fonterra’s joint venture to try and get a share of the Dairy industry and China: baby Deaths due to too much melamine in infant formula.
http://www.foodtechnology.co.nz/articles/nov08/articles/melamine.php
I am not sure how this relates to making aeroplanes but to say, there are a lot of dodgy things that seem to go on in china http://www.fonterra.com/wps/wcm/connect/fonterracom/fonterra.com/our+business/news/media+releases/fonterra+believes+hong+kong+claim+has+no+foundation (how much lead paint and Spider hero merchandise adorns the shelves of your local dollar store)
On the other hand, anyone who has flown a few hours with a screaming baby will be happy for a melamine meal.
. .
Aircraft manufacturing is, I guess, one of the last bastions of American industry to sell out. Look for Boeing to cut its employee numbers by 50% over the next 10 years.
All full of worms and backdoors
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
When will China just take over? We're already hearing about currency foreplay, corporations who bend to China's censorship (is Microsoft's Bing functional in China? Yes, you've heard of Google and China, but what of Microsoft Bing in China, do they censor for China?
Is China the Beast of Revelations? With it's growing power and weight, one has to ponder....
Engine technology of all type needs to be a closely guarded secret retained inside the USA and Britain. Making highly reliable jet engines is still an artform. Creating software that does everything necessary is part of that artform.
I use to work for a defense electronics company programming avionic equipment with many US government contracts. I work in the commercial world now, but much of that technology is hard learned over the last 50 yrs. For a 10 yr contract, these companies are giving away 50 yrs of learning. Bad trade.
Sharing militarily-valuable technology with a potential military enemy doesn't seem wise.
You could research new technologies, spy for new technologies, or get in a petty war with one other race to share all your technologies with them.
God spoke to me.
People were saying the same things about the Japanese in the 1950,s and 1960's . Nobody now says that they still are copying the western technology. In many areas they are now setting the standard.
Planes are about the only thing the US exports anymore. Soon we won't even have that.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
Maybe we can sell them those exploding electrical panels.
Have gnu, will travel.
I will never fly again. Ever.
Totally worthless company. At one time, American companies realized the value in having accumulated knowledge and tech. Now, a number of them want to give it to China while asking for handouts from the USA gov. and ppl.
TOtally sick. I think that at this time, that EU is the place to be.
Windbourne (moderating).
Of Obama has any common sense at all, he will get this stopped using ITAR.
I can't believe that GE is this stupid.
stupid^H^H^H^H^H^H greedy
Let me start by saying that I am naturally skeptical of this sort of deal. However let me offer the logic that may be behind this decision ...
Basically GE has competition and believes that if they decline the offer then a competitor may accept it. In this scenario they lose in both the short term and the long term. To prevent the tech transfer GE and its competitors must essentially establish a cartel and coordinate their actions. The problem is that cartels almost always fail, some member almost always cheats. The "cheating" may not even be greed based, one member may be losing in the market and about to fail so it sells off its tech (or itself) to avoid going out of business. The cartel not only has to coordinate to prevent tech transfer but it would also have to coordinate to keep all members at some minimal level of health. So it is highly likely that someone is going to transfer the tech. GE's logic may be that since someone will most likely do it, they might as well be that someone.
Essentially they may believe that the long term is already lost and that the short term is the only potential win.
Personally I agree with the philosophy that decision makers should be thinking long term except when short term survival is in question. However what does one do when the long term options seem to all be bad? Emotionally I want to say that GE is being dumb or greedy but I can't honestly say that this is the case, a lot more info is needed.
You seriously expect to sell to somebody goods but then be a suck and interfere with their ability to manufacture the same sometimes down the road?
Looks like a lot of you are simply striking back for having being on the wrong end of gay sex.
Fair trade, try it sometimes.
It's a bit off topic, but I don't think NYT requires registration, and I was certainly able to access their article without logging in.
So they can't blame anyone but themselves when in 2-5 years from now China stops buying those parts because they have reverse engineered them and make them on their own now and dump you now that they have taken the tech they wanted...
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Well think of it this way, :-)
... and it works. Many countries buy weapons via technology transfers with France, Germany, Russia and the US. It's an old trick
all this technology is going open source
Why not, let it be that way. many things are going that way. Music CDs are dying and you can only make money through live performaces.
Simply put China is a huge market, and so they have huge leverage
...long term pain. This is epic stupidity.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
This story and the Goldman Sachs story convinces me of that fact. From this time forward all you will see is a few sporadic twitches and spams, but it's over.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.
--Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
B.S.
The melamine thing was by one company, and was punished by the government.
Overall, they absolutely do have morals in business, which is why they're so successful: their moral is to do things that will benefit their country in the long term, without worrying about what benefits their shareholders in the short term. They'd rather spend more money to acquire a technology which will make them the leader in that technology in 20 years, than to work out a deal that costs less in the short term but doesn't give them a giant strategic advantage later.
Maybe that doesn't sound so good because it isn't good for your country or you personally, but they don't care about that. Like anyone else, they're self-interested, except that they do a lot more for their country than Westerners.
This is plain STUPID. ITAR FOR THE WIN! But hey, if they don't sell the info, you known the chinese, they will steal it. Chinese can't do shit without our creation. They are so @#$@ clueless. The only thing they ever did was copying.
too heavy due to all of the lead.
I'm guessing that GE will be violating the export control laws related to arms control. If not, then we need to adjust the law. We do a piss-poor job of enforcing our laws, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
I'd toss in a charge of treason as well, and not be wimpy about serving up the punishment that is explicitly mentioned in the US constitution.
Some poor schmuck over at GE came up with these ideas. They were paid in bowls of gruel as per normal, and the shareholders quickly patented it all, but GE isn't building as much these days. China is building like crazy. Better to make a few bucks when you can. Of course, once China has the technology, there is no stopping them from doing whatever they want with it. After all, Hu Jintao isn't really visiting a foreign country, he's going over the books of a debtor. Its like a loan shark insisting on paying a visit to a customer who is in way too deep. You want to take a look at what you own, and size up what you can do with it. Seriously, the US should stop pursuing the Intellectual Property is all doctrine, and go back to making and selling stuff (to other people), instead of just exporting technology for a quick buck. But the class warfare continues: the rich don't care about jobs for the local poor, so hire foreign poor at 1/4 the price, and make all the money on Licenses. The corporate owners get quick bucks, the locals get stiffed.
Don't forget the Chinese have an ace in the hole: you don't trade jet technology with us, we limit sales of rare-earth metals needed to build those engines.
Engine Analogies!
The Japanese went like a regular-gas engine. They ran through the whole improvement cycle faster, let's say within 40 years. But they're reaching their limits.
China is like the electric engine. Much slower to really get rolling, lots of startup bumps. But watch out, once they slam that gearshift into 5th it will be all over.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Are you talking engine performance, or the history of the development of these engines?
If the former, you have it backwards. Electric motors have peak torque from 0rpm, and peter out after that. It's gasoline engines that suck at low speeds and do better at higher speeds (up to a limit of course).
Now for engine development, you'd be right. While electric motors have been around longer than gasoline engines, they've really improved a lot in the last couple of decades thanks to stuff like brushless DC technology, while gasoline engines progressed rapidly in the early 20th century but aren't making much progress at all now (unless they're mated with an electric motor).
China is a major GE stakeholder ... I'm not surprised they're taking over GE technology
They have no morals in business... because of the Communist mentality that they were brain washed when they were little.
Unlike Enron, Halliburton, ...
The idea that morals are irrelant is a very capitalist and, dare I say it, American one. Isn't is in America that you go to business school to learn that the only thing that matters is shareholder profit? That if you have a clear suspicion that your company's products are harming people's health, you ignore it until a court ruling forces you to do otherwise? And so on - this is not about Communism, mate.
What kind of a business man will put melamine in milk - this is the same type immoral thinking that they have.
The kind of business man that has gone to business school in America. Bear in mind that these businesses have arisen after China have opened up their markets; their managers have gone to mostly American universities to get their MBAs - they have learned their ways from you guys. What you are saying is that people and community should matter more than profit - very, very Communist ideas, if I am any judge.
Even though China has already "pirated" a plane a Q400 or something like that, it hasn't caused much of an issue, due to the fact, the FAA and Euro equivalent, have not allowed the aircraft to be certified to fly in European and North American airspace... so really they can copy as many engines (or planes for that matter) as they want... to bad they aren't allowed to fly any where but in China, and if other countries start letting them fly, you can be sure the US/Europe would have their landing rights "examined" ;)
Some of the technology that GE seems so willing to part with came from US tax dollars under the defense budget. It is not theirs to give.
Japan and China are very different situations. China does not play the same game as anyone else. They are stealing from the Democracies of the world while forcing their population to be subservient to a Socialist/Communist government which holds them back. The Japanese moved from Imperialism to a Representative Democracy.
In short, GE should be held accountable to treason.
>I'd toss in a charge of treason as well
Wha??
The US isn't at war with China.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Another US company selling off our technology to the Chinese to make a quick buck. And yes, what another user said about business schools is true. I know because I went to one RECENTLY. And the mantra is "Take care of your stockholders and their return before anything else". Even accounting books will tell you that the corporation's primary objective is to earn a profit for the stockholders first and pretty much everything else is secondary. That includes employees and customers. They are important but only in so far as making a profit for the shareholders. I think the answer is that corporations and the government here have long since sold us all off to the far east. The chinese are pretty clever and before long they will be the biggest economy and the largest "superpower" in the world. How do we turn this all around? The people of this country have to take the government back for us. How to do that though when almost all the politicians are corrupt and they to are only interested in a quick buck in their back pockets? I'd like to think it would stop short of armed conflict or revolution.
China has the advantage of being much larger than either the US or Japan. They can afford to just throw things on the wall to see what sticks.
An educated population of a half billion (not there yet), with geniuses being 1 in 100k, that's 5000 geniuses to fuel innovation.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
>I'd toss in a charge of treason as well
Wha??
The US isn't at war with China.
Yet.
Were we complaining about sale of high-tech F-15 to Saudi Arabia...?
The whining here simply affirms the whiner's realization that the Chinese are good at technology (and the Saudis are not).
And if you are already conceding that the Chinese are good at it, they would eventually develop it themselves anyways.
Half my engineering class was Chinese.
I think some people here are pining for water to flow uphill.
Bear in mind that these businesses have arisen after China have opened up their markets
But China hasn't opened up its markets?
It seems that everyone here is perfectly OK with the Chinese making our salad shooters, but god forbid we get them to build something that's only a decade old.
Considering all the technologies involved are routinely licensed around the world (for instance, to Canada and the UK) and no one says a word, the conclusion is inescapable that this is nothing more than the latest Yellow Peril.
It seems to me if I as a commoner were to share jet technology, I would get a quick visit from the FBI... and be charged with many crimes and ITAR violation as well. Alrighty so I haven't RTFA like everyone else, but I don't think I need to, I just have a bad feeling about this. Oh well, that's my Gripe Of The Month.
mfwright@batnet.com
1. Maybe the Chinese already possess the secrets and want to legalize it on moral grounds.
2. Maybe GE is planning to indirectly increase their sales of medical imaging products.
3. Maybe GE actually thought about all pros and cons and came to the conlcusion that the deal is worth it.
4. Maybe China will get richer and buy more of GE's and other Western companies' stuff.
5. Maybe new technology will supercede the current one in five years.
6. Maybe those Chinese planes will be safer with GE tech than without.
ITS A TRAP!!!!!
Mod me down, I shall become more off-topic than you could possibly imagine.
This is more of a matter of Chinese saying to GE: "We will used our CHINESE factory products. You have 2 choices: 1- Take credit for it. 2-Don't take credit for it."
Note, people, that the CHOICE to give them that technology was made DECADES AGO.
American corporations sold out America itself the minute the started talking about global economy.
There is no going back.
Join me in fighting on this:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=144596146915
join me fighting
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We have a broken capitalist system ruled by monopolies. In a working capitalistic system monopolies don't exist and businesses that don't have morals don't survive. With our current broken capitalistic system China will ultimately gain the upper hand. However, by the time it does it probably won't matter any more. The singularity is only 10-20 years away. After that all bets are up. I cannot help but laugh at how blindly the world is walking into the singularity.
But China hasn't opened up its markets?
Let's consider this; 30 years ago it was very difficult for foreigners to enter China, let alone do business there - now people travel there all the time and big business is happening all the time. How does that not count as "opening up"? OK, so they haven't just opened the floodgates and let everybody from everywhere come and wade all over the place, but that is little different from, say EU or the US, as far as I can see.
Just like the needle trade, the textile trade, the small appliance trade, and essentially all the USA's manufacturing trades, all have become deeply rooted in China, along with the lucrative jobs (lucrative according to China's cost of living). So Americans, Just realize that there will be no long term future or jobs that you could take to retirement, unless you live in China. Even if GE supplies the products from the USA in the sense that the design is American, but the components are foreign, how long will it be before all of the work, from conception to product is gone there too. And I guarantee that hackers will get into GEs computer systems and copy the designs from GE's systems. Short term gain for long term pain.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada