[nosleeptill]

Yes, China doesn't need to steal much of anything, because in order to manufacture in China you need to hand over your IP to your Chinese partner company. Your Chinese partner company has another partner, the Chinese Government, so in effect when you manufacture in China you need to share your IP with the Chinese government, and they share the information you gave them with any Chinese company that could benefit.

Passing all the laws won't matter, because western companies are just handing their IP to the Chinese government.

[metacritic12]

The nature of "laws" are also different in China versus a rule-based society like the USA (heck even Europe is less rule-based than the US).

Even if China nominally had a law against IP theft, on the ground in it can be very different. They could (and do as the stories below show) ask companies to "voluntarily share their methods" and when they don',t, towns can delay permits, throw up selective barriers, and put in all sorts of disadvantages that are not officially codified.

The west would be smart to wait to see how easy it really is to do business in China without giving over IP before giving China credit.

China has been playing the "we passed a new law/speech" game to buy time for a long time, but the walk is far from following the talk. I hope China is serious, but only time will tell, not the law.

[kyrra]

Another interesting one is financial services in China. It's been closed to outside companies, but China said they would let non-Chinese companies in. Except they put a barrier that the company must have $15 billion in assets. Plus, no company has even been approved to operate there yet (as of the last reporting I saw).

https://www.wsj.com/articles/wall-street-investment-banks-fa...

non-paywall: https://outline.com/UdR3KA

[xvilka]

UBS got an approval for buying back their stocks up to 51%.

[killjoywashere]

> even Europe is less rule-based than the US

> towns can delay permits, throw up selective barriers, and put in all sorts of disadvantages that are not officially codified

Don't worry, this sort of stuff happens plenty in the US.

[xfitm3]

To the extent that it created an industry to get around it - expediters.

[shard972]

> The west would be smart to wait to see how easy it really is to do business in China without giving over IP before giving China credit.

Has this not already happened? HPE is majority owned Chinese company now isn't it?

[outworlder]

What are you talking about?

[CathayRe]

There is no such thing as "laws", at least not in the same sense as any western understanding.

The first rule for any Chinese Judge is not some Right or Values, but absolute loyalty to the party.

>The west would be smart to wait to see how easy it really is to do business in China without giving over IP before giving China credit.

When will the lesson be learned!? When will the lesson be learned!? How many more dictators must be wooed, appeased - good God, given immense privileges - before we learn? You cannot reason with a CHINA when your head is in its mouth.

[wahern]

  "China’s courts must firmly resist the western idea of judicial independence and other ideologies which threaten the leadership of the ruling Communist Party, the country’s top judge was reported as saying by state-run Chinese News Service."

  "People’s Courts at all levels must disregard erroneous western notions, including constitutional democracy and separation of powers, Chief Justice Zhou Qiang was reported by the news agency as saying at a Supreme People’s Court meeting on Saturday."

Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-policy-law/chinas-t...

That said, rule-of-law doesn't imply anything about the sources of law. In China a Party edict may be law just as much as legislation passed by the nominal legislative body. What rule-of-law demands is consistent and uniform application of the law, whatever the source. Judicial independence may be sufficient to achieve that, but it's not strictly necessary.

Most Western democracies don't have the strict, tripartite system of government as the U.S. Judicial independence in Europe arose organically as a de facto separation of powers, just as it did in ancient Rome. Over time leaders and governments figured out that things went more smoothly if they refrained from interfering with judicial proceedings, especially when you have a high-status judicial class that self-polices (where the social status of judges is dependent on them staying above the fray of lowly personal and merchant affairs, and that social status sufficiently substitutes for material wealth that there's little incentive for corruption). To a large extent judicial independence is more normative than anything, dependent on executive and legislative restraint and more general social expectations. Such norms could in principle take hold in China even with their single-party system.

Arguably such norms are taking hold. It's just that, like with poverty, they're starting from a very low point. Depending on how you want to spin it, either they haven't come very far or they've come tremendously far.

[baroffoos]

And these companies have evaluated that exploiting cheap workers overseas is worth giving up IP for.

[wahern]

The more I read about the concrete problems businesses have in China, the more apparent it becomes to me that the issue has very little to with patents and copyrights. In terms of so-called intellectual property, the major issue is trademarks, which is basically about being able to establish reliable reputation and product providence, and of course state-sponsored corporate espionage that takes trade secrets.

Far more important is just the red tape, and inconsistent and unfair treatment of foreign-owned companies, which compounds the already substantial language and cultural issues.

In any event, none of these things--trademarks, trade secret espionage, and rule-of-law regulatory environment--can be significantly addressed through existing negotiations. U.S. negotiators are trying to score big "wins" on copyright and patent enforcement, but as many of us on HN already know, those things (particularly the latter) don't actually contribute much of substance to the economic engine. Tariffs are also not really a big deal considering that WTO rules already provide a floor. Like with fuel efficiency standards, the returns on bilateral agreements are substantially diminished from the outset.