| I think despite their best efforts, most people are still more or less influenced by nationalism. Not just Americans, but anyone in the world can be afflicted with nationalism that impacts true neutrality of viewpoints. Since y combinator new is most frequented by people from the US and other western nations that are having this conflict with China right now, my belief is that their emotions guide their logic. So everything that China does is bad and western countries are the victims. Which is the narrative that is also being strongly pushed in the American media and to a smaller extent other western media. But as a Singaporean living in Asia, I don't see anything wrong with China's development path. It is developing the same way as almost every other industrialised nation in the world did. First by blatant disregard for IP and then slowly as it progresses up the economic ladder, it provides more and more protection for IP. China today and China ten years ago is vastly different in terms of the amount of the strength of its IP protection enforcement. And with its current trajectory, it will be vastly stronger in ten years still. With regards to barriers to imports, China has less barriers than most of the other developing nations and reducing sharply each year. Instead of recognising this fact and working to hasten IP protections, America seems to me to be going on a mutually destructive path that is bad for everyone in the region if not the world. That makes me suspect this is not really about IP and prosperity but power which unlike the former, is zero-sum. Its one thing for the average person on the street, but I don't understand why intelligent people in the West find it so difficult to separate facts from fiction and emotions from logic. Lastly, I would like to add. There is nothing inherently moral or immoral about IP. It's just a way for the incumbents to protect their position. Making this a moral problem (Chinese bad because they steal IP) is not the right approach. |