[gmueckl]

The knowledge transfer was maybe unintentional for western companies, but it was also incredibly naive. It was (and is) China's big aim to acquire as much knowledge as possible. Western companies were naturally transferring knowledge to China when they built new factories there and this was exploited ruthlessly. Also, China does a lot of industrial espionage. None of this is exactly secret.

[lazyjones]

It wasn’t unintentional. China demanded technology transfer for access to their market: https://www.npr.org/2010/11/22/131520776/china-s-technology-...

Not countering this policy early on was naive on behalf of US/European politics.

[jsmith99]

Many economists disagree, as there is no reason why companies should not share intellectual property when it is profitable for them to do so, e.g. https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2018/08/intellectual-prop...

[gmueckl]

This argument as presented in the blog post seems incoherent and poorly thought through to me. Companies innovate because this gives them a competitive advantage in a market that has strong protections for trade secrets and patents. This is essential for all kinds of tech companies to survive in healthy, competitive markets.

Thr flaw in the argument is that China essentially does not honor these protections. So if a foreign company invents something and wxports this knowledge to China, a purely Chinese run company will soon after build an essentially equal product without having to spend mony on any of the expensive R&D to actually develop that tech. This potentially ruinous asymmetry is not accounted for at all.

[jsmith99]

The point is, no one is forcing them to export to China. These companies accept the deal.

[gmueckl]

And all I'm saying that they made bad deals. This is coming back to hurt them.