[oldandtired]

> You're right. I wasn't in any way trying to imply that the Chinese government was acting fairly - they are stealing and ought to be punished.

The Chinese government is doing nothing different to the USA government. So, of one accuses the Chinese government of acting unfairly, then one must also accuse the USA government the same way. The Chinese government is only acting in the same manner as the USA government.

If the Chinese government is "stealing and must be punished", then so to is the USA government and the same punishment needs to be handed out to the USA government.

The actions being discussed are common to all governments (and a lot of companies as well) and if you want things to change then you have to take seriously your responsibility to bring about change in your government.

I am no fan of the Chinese government and I am no fan of the USA government. From my perspective, they are both acting in the same manner and are both causing serious damage to the world in all sorts of ways. But that is a discussion for another time and place.

[notSupplied]

Sure, the US government engages in espionage. But there is a huge difference between stealing the specs of the latest Chinese fighter jet so you know how to engage against them, and stealing in order to hand it off to your own domestic industry to give them an edge.

[majia]

The US does conduct espionage to help its political and economic negotiations. Its goal is to give us industry an edge too. The US isn’t performing commercial spying simply because there isn’t much valuable staff for it to steal. It’s rather hypocritical to critize one form of espionage and think the other forms are ok.

[oldandtired]

I am not talking about espionage. I am talking about the situation where the US government takes what someone who is not a US citizen and located in another country has spent two decades privately working on a technology and then when patenting it, is informed that not only has the US government taken the use of the technology but if he speaks on the details of that technology in any public way, he will be imprisoned. No objections allowed, no payments received, only punishment if he discusses the subject matter.

As I have watched him do this research and development over those two decades, I recently asked him how it was going. He only response was the above and he would not discuss further that technology to protect me, my family and his family from any repercussions.

As I have come across this kind of activity before, I take the entire "stealing of intellectual property" concept as something that governments like to indulge in and like to accuse others of the "heinous" action while trying to appear as lily white innocents themselves.

YMMV, but as far as I am concerned China is just the new USA.

[walterbell]

Article on patents and secrecy orders: https://www.wired.com/2013/04/gov-secrecy-orders-on-patents/

[oldandtired]

The problem here is that the USA government thinks that it is above the rules of every other nation on earth. When any other national government pursues the same actions as the USA government, you really cannot complain unless you complain about them all.

So back to the point of the Chinese appropriating knowledge for Chinese use, unless you want to complain about the USA government leading the way in this area, there is nothing to complain about.

You might not like it but if you want to say there is a "moral" difference between the actions undertaken by both governments, you really are on very thin ice, so to speak.

[walterbell]

Too bad there no public comparative statistics on technology appropriation across time, geography, origin and destination.

Or the laws which governed such appropriations.