Slashdot Mirror
Trade War Or Not, China is Closing the Gap on US in Technology IP Race (reuters.com)
China's rising investment in research and expansion of its higher education system mean that it is fast closing the gap with the United States in intellectual property and the struggle to be the No.1 global technology power, according to patent experts. From a report: While U.S. President Donald Trump's threat of punitive tariffs on high-tech U.S. exports could slow Beijing's momentum, it won't turn back the tide, they say. Washington's allegation that the Chinese have engaged in intellectual property theft over many years -- which is denied by Beijing -- is a central reason for the worsening trade conflict between the U.S. and China. Forecasts for how long it will take for Beijing to close the technological gap vary -- though several patent specialists say it could happen in the next decade.
And China is already leapfrogging ahead in a couple of areas. "With the number of scientists China is training every year it will eventually catch up, regardless of what the U.S. does," said David Shen, head of IP for China at global law firm Allen & Overy. Indeed, IP lawyers now see President Xi Jinping's pledge earlier this week to protect foreign IP rights as projecting confidence in China's position as a leading innovator in sectors such as telecommunications and online payments, as well as its ability to catch up in other areas.
And China is already leapfrogging ahead in a couple of areas. "With the number of scientists China is training every year it will eventually catch up, regardless of what the U.S. does," said David Shen, head of IP for China at global law firm Allen & Overy. Indeed, IP lawyers now see President Xi Jinping's pledge earlier this week to protect foreign IP rights as projecting confidence in China's position as a leading innovator in sectors such as telecommunications and online payments, as well as its ability to catch up in other areas.
Does this mean all the other countries of the world can start stealing their intellectual property soon? It's been a bit one sided so far...
Not. There aren't even any tariffs except on steel and aluminum, and those don’t apply to some of the biggest US trading partners. Talk is not a tariff. A tariff is not a "trade war".
News media should report the news when it happens, not before it happens — as they imagine it might someday happen.
Well, yeah. When you can steal until you don't need to anymore, I guess that is kind of convenient ...
This is being measured entirely by patents. This is the wrong metric to use, although I'm sure the usual suspects are creaming in their pants to see another "America is going to get it" article. They hate our guts and dream of the day we'll be humiliated. What can I say, we deserve it, we're horrible people. Patents in the USA, particularly regarding software, are total bullshit. They shouldn't even be granted, and when they are, they're either for totally obscure ideas or for ideas obvious to anyone in the art. Patents in China are bullshit too, they don't have anything to do with actual progress. Hey, who cares though, journalists aren't experts and they love to distill complex topics down to a single number that they mistakenly regard like a sports score.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Yep. It's totally obvious. You want to win a technology race? Then have more and smarter people researching. Time after time we see how little the US and the average citizen cares about their education system. After decades of neglect, we're now reaping what was sown.
China has TONS of internal problems. They have 300 million "modern" people, and one freaking billion poor peasants that they're responsible for. They have a Communist system that we know for a fact fails. The only reason they held it together after Tiananmen is that the USA stupidly admitted them to the WTO, thinking that for some reason democracy would break out in China. China has zero tradition of democracy and has always been ruled by emperors or chaos. Unsurprisingly, it didn't happen.
The Communist Party is scared shitless of the people. If the people knew what had been done in their name, they would rise up overnight and kick the bastards out. There are tons of restrictions on public gatherings, surveillance everywhere, and no free speech. These are enormous problems that can never be solved, not without destroying the Party's rule.
Then there is China's horrible strategic situation. They are hemmed in by three rings of American defenses in the Pacific, hostile neighbors, and the vastness of Asia. Who cares if they dominate the South China Sea, it's their backyard, it's like complaining that the Americans dominate the Gulf of Mexico. The US Navy sits on the Strait of Malacca, China's jugular vein. Cut that and China is cut off from its sources of energy in the Middle East. One Belt One Road I hear someone say? It's 15 times more expensive to transport goods by land than by sea. They're doing OBOR because they literally have no other choice. Africa I hear someone else say? Again, no other choice. All the good spots in the world were taken long ago by the West. We're not in Africa because China forced us out, we're not in Africa because it's hopeless, you can't help them, their elites steal everything that's not nailed down and return with crowbars to steal the rest.
China is utterly dependent on foreign trade and American tariffs can really throw a monkey wrench into their plans. Besides, the tariffs are less about slowing China's rise than assisting America's re-rise. China would trade their honor students and their (poorly) speaking English population in a heartbeat for any other country's situation.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
The Chinese are stealing the right stuff - like solar and other green tech.
And in the meantime, our policies are to go back to the 19th century and use coal.
When we lose our energy independence to China will be some tough soul searching.
This is almost an irrelevancy.
And this was the money shot. When all's said and done, China has four times our population. Absent something significant (WW3 scale), in the long run, they'll tend to always have more people researching, and they'll tend to be the dominant nation in the world.
Mind you, I expect they'll find a way to screw that up if they try hard enough, but the odds are in their favour, and will remain so, no matter what we do.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Unless you can make a cheap, point to point solution (laser beams) that work over distances, the biggest problem with another "internet" will be who lays the pipe, which tends to be the government, with private companies handed that privilege as a proxy.
How many scientists and engineers do you know who are unemployed, struggling to make a decent living, or doing something unrelated to their academic training? How many more do you know who are languishing at jobs they hate and that underutilize their talent? How many do you know who are wasting their time and talent writing cell phone apps or something equally menial?
The U.S. technology sector is trading innovation for short term profits and temporary capital gains. Silicon Valley is more about venture capital than science these days. Meanwhile, China is recognizing the importance of science and technology more than ever. It's no wonder China is closing in on us fast.
With China's massive population advantage and our apathy, we'll be a distant number two in no time. Our problems are only going to get worse as people stop pursuing science and engineering careers because the jobs suck.
It's comments like this that utterly baffle me. It's like the poster lives in an entirely different universe where American education is not the best in the world. Chinese send massive numbers of students to America for the superior education. How many students does America send to China? Hell, people will advise you NOT to get a degree from a Chinese school because it's worthless (unless you want to spend the rest of your life in China). They cheat on their grades and the professors are worthless layabouts.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
...the biggest problem with another "internet" will be who lays the pipe, which tends to be the government, with private companies handed that privilege as a proxy.
Citations please.
Cable and telcos? The governments granted them the land, making them natural monopolies. If someone could make a reliable mesh system using lasers, this would allow some type of interconnected ad-hoc network to exist without having to have a dedicated ISP.
Oh, wait, no, I know exactly where they got it from.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
You didn't actually address any of my points. Instead you used a logical fallacy known as "ad hominem". Care to try again? Here's another argument:
China is a trade manipulator. Right now China enjoys the status of a developing country under the WTO rules, granting it the right to trade protections not available to developed countries. Sure, China is still developing--in parts--but is highly developed in other parts (the developed city centers of China now constitute a middle class as large as that of the U.S.). The consequence is China has essentially hacked the WTO to its advantage.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
They've been spending on STEM while we've been cutting back in favor of tax cuts (83% for the top 1%, but I guess the 99% got 17% of them).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The US represents about 4% of the global population. China is 19%. If China ever got its political head out of the wrong end of its anatomy it would crush us. Even if they only manage not to be stubbornly stupid they'll be tough to keep up with in the 21st Century.
So how can the US maintain it's scientific and technological preeminence? The same way it got it in the first place: immigration. US 20th century STEM preeminence is built mostly by people who came here looking for religious and political toleration, especially around WW2.
No immigrants means no Manhattan Project or US space program. No Admiral Hyman Rickover, so no US nuclear navy. No Sikorsky helicopters. No US Steel, Bell Telephone, or Westinghouse Electric. Just excluding John von Neumann alone would leave a huge hole in US scientific prestige. And today, if you waved a magic wand and eliminated all immigrants in the US, more than half of the scientists and engineers working in the US would disappear.
Immigration doesn't bring the worst people here, it brings the best, or at least the most enterprising. Nearly half of US fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or children of immigrants.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Congratulations for completely not addressing anything I said and changing the topic - once again - to America's perceived shortcomings. Your comment is literally whataboutism.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Eh..
Fail in the US (particularly SV): lick your wounds, dust yourself off, and try again
Fail in China: I'm not sure, but it probably involves a firing squad, and/or your entire family being disgraced for generations. (hyperbole or fact, you decide)
That's why we shouldn't worry too much about 'chinese innovation' .. not sure they're culture is really tolerant of what it takes to truly innovate (steal/borrow/iterate -- sure, but that just guarantees always being at least a step behind)
And besides, how many of the tech leaders in the past 60 odd years were the product of formalized, top-down education and control?
No, Ottoman empire converted to Islam and redirected all their energy into studying Koran. Their technology suffered as a result, yet they managed to keep going on inertia for many hundred years.
If US redirects all energy into studying Bible, then the same thing going to happen here.
China would trade their honor students and their (poorly) speaking English population in a heartbeat for any other country's situation.
China the people might sorta maybe, but China the leaders absolutely wouldn't. Preservation of party power is the prime objective, and economic prosperity is encouraged/tolerated because it furthers the prime objective. From an external perspective, this prime objective has one good side-effect. China will not risk an external war because such a war potentially threatens the prime objective. Saber rattling on the other hand furthers the prime objective, as long as an actual war doesn't start.
As far as trading China's strengths for the strengths of other countries, well, I'm sure there are some things that they would like and some things they wouldn't. Educational excellence has been a China value for a very long time and is unlikely to be "traded" for a very long time.
*their.
What is preview, and how does one use it effectively?
The Communist Party is scared shitless of the people. If the people knew what had been done in their name, they would rise up overnight and kick the bastards out. There are tons of restrictions on public gatherings, surveillance everywhere, and no free speech. These are enormous problems that can never be solved, not without destroying the Party's rule.
Well there's two ways of interpreting that, one is what you say. The other alternative is that the Communist Party got the people wrapped around their little finger and in fact feel very confident they can suppress any dissidents, malcontents and anyone else negative of their agenda.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
China is not a "developing country" ... that was 40 years ago.
Why don't you travel there for once instead of spreading your american ignorance, hate and fear?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
How do you come to that brain dead idea?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
we're bringing coal back! #MAGA!
developing 'new' IP based on others old IP is easy
coming up with fresh new ideas is hard
Go well
Democracy isn't the solution to everything.
You need a commitment to the rule of law, social standards against corruption, and a few other things first.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
If someone could make a reliable mesh system using lasers, this would allow some type of interconnected ad-hoc network to exist without having to have a dedicated ISP.
Good luck with that.
The US government would never permit the existence in the US of any communications network they did not control and could not collect bulk surveillance data on and trace/track any and every user at will. Authoritarian regimes don't operate like that.
After all, one does not allow their livestock/slaves the tools to be able to communicate securely and organize to free themselves.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
STFU with the whataboutism already. Nobody wants to hear your anti-American whining crap.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
They're still treated as a developing country by the WTO. Did you read what I wrote before you started expressing your America-hate?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Well,
then they changed the definitions, I was not aware of that.
However, actually they have no definition ...
"There are no WTO definitions of âoedevelopedâ and âoedevelopingâ countries. Members announce for themselves whether they are âoedevelopedâ or âoedevelopingâ countries. However, other members can challenge the decision of a member to make use of provisions available to developing countries."
How do you come to the stupid idea that I hate America? I most likely will never visit it, but hate, no.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Edge: A Conversation With Kai-Fu Lee [3.26.18]
After the boring stuff (a who's-who of artificial intelligence research, including one Bob Mercer) and the "~ ~ ~ ~" article divider, this one-way-mirror interview is all about the technological VC ambitions arising in China now.
World domination?
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
It has always been a day care center and indoctrination project. Generations of people went through it, saw the value, and didn't really care that it withered away. The centralized institution is a relic that we still cling to out of ignorance and fear. We are finding over and over that distributed, fluid collaboration and loose coupling will lead to the next advances in freedom, human understanding, and prosperity. Information networks are microcosmic representations of natural systems such as our brains. Every tool we fashion is a microcosmic representation or likeness of a macrocosm in nature. Tools keep improving...don't get bent out of shape because we don't need a particular tool (institutionalized schools) any more.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Let's rephrase it then. China has a lot of internal problems that other countries don't have that preclude them from advancing to the point where they can organically control their situation and a global empire.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Such as? If you haven't noticed, they're already doing both.
You are welcome on my lawn.