Political and Military Analysis on China

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no_name

Colonel
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Bo Xilai And The Return Of Politics

The storm over the blind activist Chen Guangcheng has understandably captured the world's attention in the past week. But an event of much greater significance remains the ouster of Bo Xilai, the powerful party boss of Chongqing. The rise and fall of Bo is part of a much larger and potentially disruptive trend in China — the return of politics to the Chinese Communist Party.

We don't much think of the party as a political organization these days. It is dominated by technocrats obsessed with economic and engineering challenges. These men — and they are almost all men — are comfortable talking about detailed economic and technical data, but they are not skilled politicians, adept at handling large crowds or palace intrigue. This apolitical system is a recent phenomenon and the outcome of a conscious decision by the founder of modern China, Deng Xiaoping.

When the Chinese communists took power in 1949, the party was dominated by charismatic revolutionaries and military leaders. Court politics, intrigue, ideological posturing and mass politics were pervasive in the new regime, and its leader, Mao Zedong, was a master politician. In 1957 he launched the "antirightist campaign," which was followed by the Great Leap Forward, which was followed by the Cultural Revolution, all designed to divide and destroy his opponents and consolidate his power.

(COVER STORY: The People's Republic of Scandal)

Mao also kept his lieutenants in constant turmoil. Just before the Cultural Revolution, Beijing published a list of the 26 top officials in China. Two years later, only 13 remained in office, the others having been purged. Defense Minister Lin Biao, once designated as Mao's successor, tried to flee the country and was killed. Hyperpolitics persisted after Mao's death. The new head of the party ordered the arrest of the radical Gang of Four, who were said to have been perpetrators of the Cultural Revolution. They were tried, convicted and imprisoned.

It was against this backdrop that Deng took power in the late 1970s and 1980s. Deng was determined to end the high drama of Chinese political life and focus on economic development. He wanted to turn the party into a professional organization run by technocrats, mostly engineers. He required them to have been top students who subsequently showed skill in practical problem solving. He even changed the tone of party meetings, which had been devoted to long-winded ideological speeches, saying in 1980, "If you don't have anything to say, save your breath ... The only reason to hold meetings and to speak at them is to solve problems."

(MORE: Bo Xilai)

The party was soon transformed. By 1985, the Central Committee was dominated by younger college graduates and the Politburo's Standing Committee, the country's ruling elite, were all engineers. That tradition of technocracy has persisted. A party whose history is tied to peasants, workers and soldiers is now the most elitist operation in the world. Its system of promotion favors engineers, economists and management experts over anyone with grassroots political skills. For two decades, China has been run like a company, not a country.

Eventually, politics had to re-emerge. China has reached a level of growth and development at which the big questions it faces are not technical engineering puzzles but deep political, philosophical ones.

Bo represented the revival of politics in at least two ways. In a system of colorless men, he was charismatic, conniving and political. He was comfortable in front of crowds, eager to push himself forward, and he rubbed against the grain of consensus decisionmaking. Money was, as in U.S. politics, the grease that smoothed Bo's rise. But he also represented the "new left," an ideological movement that emphasized social and cultural solidarity, the power of the state and other populist issues. Whether he truly believed in these stances is irrelevant. Like all good political entrepreneurs, he saw a market for these ideas in modern China and filled it. And there are other would-be leaders — military nationalists, economic liberals, even more-full-throated populists — who are debating China's future furiously, though privately, in Beijing and Shanghai.

Bo's ouster is the most significant purge in the party's top ranks since Tiananmen Square. The party may hope that the People's Republic, as it did after that earlier upheaval, can return to its efficient and steady technocratic path. But China has changed too much. And politics in China is xenophobic, populist, nationalist, messy and certainly unpredictable — like politics everywhere.

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escobar

escobar

Brigadier
The Jamestown Foundation,
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* Exploring Constitutional Reform in the Wake of the Bo Xilai Affair
* Chen Guangcheng Fiasco Shows Dim Prospects for Political-Legal Reform
* State Council Highlights China’s Information Security Challenges
* Local Government Financing Growing Increasingly Precarious
* Assessing China’s Response Options to Kidnappings Abroad
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J

J-XX

Banned Idiot
The west fears china's rise.

China is growing powerful and influential in all areas of the world, the has to deal with china now and won't have everything it's way.
 
escobar

escobar

Brigadier
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Much is being said about the Chinese military dramatically improving its combat capability to keep United States forces at arm's length.

Anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) is the magic slogan, meaning that the People's Liberation Army's (PLA's) new shore-based artillery, aircraft and naval assets could deny a rapid deployment by United States forces into the Pacific in the event of a conflict, since the US would face heavy losses. But exactly how concerned is the US?

A US military exercise that took place in April known as Operation Chimichanga provides some of the answers, but if it wasn't for the journalists David Axe and Noah Shachtman, nobody would have likely taken note of it outside the US army.

In an article for the American magazine Wired, the pair described a US Air Force drill in Alaska in early April, during which F-22 Raptor stealth fighters supported by older F-16s paved the way for B-1 bombers, which reduced an imaginary enemy's air defense into rubble. As this impressive drill was pronouncedly put into a long-range strike context, it was plainly obvious that the exercise was aimed at China, according to the article.

"Officially, Operation Chimichanga was meant to validate the long-range strike capability of the B-1s as well as the F-22s' and F-16s' ability to escort them into an anti-access target area," Axe and Shachtman wrote. "Unofficially, Operation Chimichanga was a proof-of-concept for the air force's evolving tactics for battling China over the vast western Pacific ... the air force would never say that."

When North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)-led forces took on Muammar Gaddafi's Libya in 2011, there was no such a thing as A2/AD strategy to worry about. Allied warships and submarines could get easily into waters off the North African coast, fire cruise missiles against Libyan commando posts and together with fighter jets destroy that country's air-defense systems in no time at all. Once the latter was achieved, Gaddafi's days were numbered as NATO fighter jets and attack helicopters roamed Libyan airspace with near impunity.

In the unlikely event of a US attack on China, things wouldn't be as simple. One-and-a-half decades have passed since then-US president Bill Clinton ordered the USS Independence and USS Nimitz carrier battle groups into the Taiwan Strait right at China's doorsteps to stop the Chinese from muscling Taiwan, and such a deployment will not happen again.

Since the PLA was humiliated by Clinton in the mid-1990s, it has honed the A2/AD doctrine to perfection, with the flag weapon of choice being the Deng Feng 21D (DF-21D), the ballistic "carrier killer" anti-ship missile.

Together with the Beidou satellite system, which from the end of this decade will provide the PLA missile force with precision targeting capabilities, in addition to countless other weapon systems, the DF-21D will be used to protect China and its vast territorial claims reaching from Tibet and Xinjiang to the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea.

There also is China's nuclear arsenal. But an American attack on China is only feasible if it was over the PLA trying to get its hands on places such as Taiwan, South Korea, Japan or Australia; it is highly doubtful that the Chinese leadership would choose to press the red button in order to facilitate such a PLA crusade.

In their article on "Operation Chimichanga", Axe and Shachtman explained what problems the US would face when taking on China with conventional weapons.

"While the Alaska test apparently proved that the stealthy strike team can defeat determined enemy forces at long range, it also underscored America's vulnerability against the fast-growing Chinese military", they wrote. "It takes the latest stealth fighters and upgraded bombers flying as a team to beat China, and thanks to developmental problems America has only so many of those airplanes to work with."

The two added that while the US Air Force has about 150 bombers, only a handful of B-2s are fully stealthy. That makes the lion's share of the bomber force vulnerable to China's thousands of air defense positions. In theory, F-22s or the F-35s could first knock these out. But the US has fewer than 200 F-22s operational, which would be hardly enough, while the delay-plagued F-35 hasn't even been built.

Nonetheless, experts interviewed by Asia Times Online believe that the edge the US always had over China is not gone.

According to Oliver Braeuner, a China and security expert at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute), the notion that China's A2/AD-protected zones have become impenetrable is greatly exaggerated.

"The United States remains the world's number one military power and still accounted for around 41% of global defense spending in 2011," Braeuner said.

He added that the US's allies in the region could be destined to take over part of the dirty work.

"With the recently announced 'pivot to Asia', Washington has reaffirmed its commitment to regional security in the Asia-Pacific. However, this approach does not rely on US military power alone," Braeuner said. "It will probably mean that in the future America's regional allies will have to take over greater security responsibilities themselves as well."

Steve Tsang, director of the University of Nottingham's China Policy Institute, thinks Beijing is misguided in its assessment on the PLA's A2/AD capability.

"Having an operational anti-ship ballistic missile [DF-21D] will not in fact be as critical as many in Beijing think. The US Navy and Air Force will expect to suffer significant losses if the US became involved in a military confrontation with a near peer competitor," Tsang said.

He said that the prospect of major combatant ships, such as aircraft carriers, being badly damaged or even lost would not be sufficient to deter US forces from fulfilling the orders of their political leadership.

According to Tsang, the US already has plans to deal with the A2/AD capabilities of the PLA, the most effective of which at the moment are PLA submarines. He sees the Chinese and the Americans playing a cat and mouse game that will continue to develop and change as technologies evolve.

"A 'game changer' is not the same as something that will put an end to the game," Tsang said.

"This applies to when the PLA can demonstrate that its anti-ship ballistic missiles are accurate, effective and operational. The US will just respond in ways that will minimize the risk to its assets and adopt different tactics and weapon systems."

James Holmes, an associate professor at the US Naval War College, also said that operating in China's forbidden zones, though dangerous, has not yet become a suicide mission for US forces.

"Navies have always taken risks operating within reach of shore-based gunfire. In the age of sails, it was about cannon firing from the ramparts of fortresses," Holmes said.

"Today, the anti-ship ballistic missile and other anti-access weaponry should be viewed as a very extended-range version of the same thing."

Holmes sees this is a serious challenge not "because the Chinas or Irans of the world can lock the US military out of certain areas on the map", but because they can impose steep costs for daring to enter these areas.

"Unless US decision-makers are willing to pay these costs, they may not send forces into harm's way in times of strife. China, to name the main anti-access player, is betting that Washington values Taiwan less than it does the US Pacific Fleet."

He then expounded on a school of thought gaining momentum in the US, called "offshore balancing". According to Holmes, this is the notion that the US can retire from its commitments in Eurasia, entrust them to nations to balance any big power that seeks to dominate the region, and return only if local powers can't restrain the would-be hegemon.

"That means arms [for US allies]. But what the specific arms packages should look like is another question."

Holmes concluded on a confident note. "We are certainly working on things, and on doctrine and tactics, to overcome the Anti-Access/Area Denial challenge - to return the costs of entry to an acceptable level for us."

John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a US think-tank, say the US military's seeming lack of concern is particularly telling.

"One of the primary defenses against anti-shipping cruise missiles is the CIWS Goalkeeper gun system [which fires from ships against incoming missiles and ballistic shells]," Pike said.

"If you were worried about saturation attacks, you might add more of them to each ship. This is not happening. In contrast, during World War II the US Navy was worried about Kamikaze [pilots], and ships were absolutely encrusted with anti-aircraft guns."
 
A

airsuperiority

Captain
escobar said:
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Much is being said about the Chinese military dramatically improving its combat capability to keep United States forces at arm's length.

Anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) is the magic slogan, meaning that the People's Liberation Army's (PLA's) new shore-based artillery, aircraft and naval assets could deny a rapid deployment by United States forces into the Pacific in the event of a conflict, since the US would face heavy losses. But exactly how concerned is the US?

A US military exercise that took place in April known as Operation Chimichanga provides some of the answers, but if it wasn't for the journalists David Axe and Noah Shachtman, nobody would have likely taken note of it outside the US army.

In an article for the American magazine Wired, the pair described a US Air Force drill in Alaska in early April, during which F-22 Raptor stealth fighters supported by older F-16s paved the way for B-1 bombers, which reduced an imaginary enemy's air defense into rubble. As this impressive drill was pronouncedly put into a long-range strike context, it was plainly obvious that the exercise was aimed at China, according to the article.

"Officially, Operation Chimichanga was meant to validate the long-range strike capability of the B-1s as well as the F-22s' and F-16s' ability to escort them into an anti-access target area," Axe and Shachtman wrote. "Unofficially, Operation Chimichanga was a proof-of-concept for the air force's evolving tactics for battling China over the vast western Pacific ... the air force would never say that."

When North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)-led forces took on Muammar Gaddafi's Libya in 2011, there was no such a thing as A2/AD strategy to worry about. Allied warships and submarines could get easily into waters off the North African coast, fire cruise missiles against Libyan commando posts and together with fighter jets destroy that country's air-defense systems in no time at all. Once the latter was achieved, Gaddafi's days were numbered as NATO fighter jets and attack helicopters roamed Libyan airspace with near impunity.

In the unlikely event of a US attack on China, things wouldn't be as simple. One-and-a-half decades have passed since then-US president Bill Clinton ordered the USS Independence and USS Nimitz carrier battle groups into the Taiwan Strait right at China's doorsteps to stop the Chinese from muscling Taiwan, and such a deployment will not happen again.

Since the PLA was humiliated by Clinton in the mid-1990s, it has honed the A2/AD doctrine to perfection, with the flag weapon of choice being the Deng Feng 21D (DF-21D), the ballistic "carrier killer" anti-ship missile.

Together with the Beidou satellite system, which from the end of this decade will provide the PLA missile force with precision targeting capabilities, in addition to countless other weapon systems, the DF-21D will be used to protect China and its vast territorial claims reaching from Tibet and Xinjiang to the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea.

There also is China's nuclear arsenal. But an American attack on China is only feasible if it was over the PLA trying to get its hands on places such as Taiwan, South Korea, Japan or Australia; it is highly doubtful that the Chinese leadership would choose to press the red button in order to facilitate such a PLA crusade.

In their article on "Operation Chimichanga", Axe and Shachtman explained what problems the US would face when taking on China with conventional weapons.

"While the Alaska test apparently proved that the stealthy strike team can defeat determined enemy forces at long range, it also underscored America's vulnerability against the fast-growing Chinese military", they wrote. "It takes the latest stealth fighters and upgraded bombers flying as a team to beat China, and thanks to developmental problems America has only so many of those airplanes to work with."

The two added that while the US Air Force has about 150 bombers, only a handful of B-2s are fully stealthy. That makes the lion's share of the bomber force vulnerable to China's thousands of air defense positions. In theory, F-22s or the F-35s could first knock these out. But the US has fewer than 200 F-22s operational, which would be hardly enough, while the delay-plagued F-35 hasn't even been built.

Nonetheless, experts interviewed by Asia Times Online believe that the edge the US always had over China is not gone.

According to Oliver Braeuner, a China and security expert at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute), the notion that China's A2/AD-protected zones have become impenetrable is greatly exaggerated.

"The United States remains the world's number one military power and still accounted for around 41% of global defense spending in 2011," Braeuner said.

He added that the US's allies in the region could be destined to take over part of the dirty work.

"With the recently announced 'pivot to Asia', Washington has reaffirmed its commitment to regional security in the Asia-Pacific. However, this approach does not rely on US military power alone," Braeuner said. "It will probably mean that in the future America's regional allies will have to take over greater security responsibilities themselves as well."

Steve Tsang, director of the University of Nottingham's China Policy Institute, thinks Beijing is misguided in its assessment on the PLA's A2/AD capability.

"Having an operational anti-ship ballistic missile [DF-21D] will not in fact be as critical as many in Beijing think. The US Navy and Air Force will expect to suffer significant losses if the US became involved in a military confrontation with a near peer competitor," Tsang said.

He said that the prospect of major combatant ships, such as aircraft carriers, being badly damaged or even lost would not be sufficient to deter US forces from fulfilling the orders of their political leadership.

According to Tsang, the US already has plans to deal with the A2/AD capabilities of the PLA, the most effective of which at the moment are PLA submarines. He sees the Chinese and the Americans playing a cat and mouse game that will continue to develop and change as technologies evolve.

"A 'game changer' is not the same as something that will put an end to the game," Tsang said.

"This applies to when the PLA can demonstrate that its anti-ship ballistic missiles are accurate, effective and operational. The US will just respond in ways that will minimize the risk to its assets and adopt different tactics and weapon systems."

James Holmes, an associate professor at the US Naval War College, also said that operating in China's forbidden zones, though dangerous, has not yet become a suicide mission for US forces.

"Navies have always taken risks operating within reach of shore-based gunfire. In the age of sails, it was about cannon firing from the ramparts of fortresses," Holmes said.

"Today, the anti-ship ballistic missile and other anti-access weaponry should be viewed as a very extended-range version of the same thing."

Holmes sees this is a serious challenge not "because the Chinas or Irans of the world can lock the US military out of certain areas on the map", but because they can impose steep costs for daring to enter these areas.

"Unless US decision-makers are willing to pay these costs, they may not send forces into harm's way in times of strife. China, to name the main anti-access player, is betting that Washington values Taiwan less than it does the US Pacific Fleet."

He then expounded on a school of thought gaining momentum in the US, called "offshore balancing". According to Holmes, this is the notion that the US can retire from its commitments in Eurasia, entrust them to nations to balance any big power that seeks to dominate the region, and return only if local powers can't restrain the would-be hegemon.

"That means arms [for US allies]. But what the specific arms packages should look like is another question."

Holmes concluded on a confident note. "We are certainly working on things, and on doctrine and tactics, to overcome the Anti-Access/Area Denial challenge - to return the costs of entry to an acceptable level for us."

John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a US think-tank, say the US military's seeming lack of concern is particularly telling.

"One of the primary defenses against anti-shipping cruise missiles is the CIWS Goalkeeper gun system [which fires from ships against incoming missiles and ballistic shells]," Pike said.

"If you were worried about saturation attacks, you might add more of them to each ship. This is not happening. In contrast, during World War II the US Navy was worried about Kamikaze [pilots], and ships were absolutely encrusted with anti-aircraft guns."
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For everything they've said, at the end of the day it has changed nothing. Standing a better chance than before is just saying a higher chance of success in terms of operational objectives, but saying nothing of costs. Since it is probably gonna just as cost-yielding as before, this "higher chance of success" won't make any differences to anything if US still have to sacrifice just as much of its assets to get involved. The reason is because A2/AD is to meant to make things so costly that the US finds it unattractive to intervene at all, therefore the mechanisms in place is the cost. And since given the the cost remains high enough to deter US, it still won't matter to the Washington if there's a higher chance now, since the whole point is that they're uninterested in bearing this cost. (offering a free iphone for a purchase of a $1000 item means nothing if the buyer is determined not to buy anything that costs more than $600)
 
N

NikeX

Banned Idiot
China losing grip on rare earth markets

The fight over the minerals that run the electronic world entered a new phase in March when the United States, the European Union and Japan collectively filed a case against China, accusing the rare-earth powerhouse of violating world trade rules to manipulate mineral prices.

At the heart of the argument are 17 little-known elements with whimsical names like europium and praseodymium, that are found in everything from mobile phones and computers to smart bombs and large wind turbines. Traces of the metals can be found around the world, but rarely in high enough concentrations for mining to be convenient or profitable.

China now controls 95 percent of total rare-earth supply. A figurative sneeze on its export policy is all that’s needed to shake global markets, and in 2010 China began restricting rare-earth exports. International prices spiked, reaching near-dizzying levels last summer before crashing in the fall. In the wake of the World Trade Organization case, they’ve perked up again.

Foreign companies buying rare earths from China must now pay more than twice the rate paid by companies inside China. The tiered pricing encourages companies to move factories and jobs to China, where they can be sure of supply and lower prices. Beyond the extra economic boost for China, this has made it easier for Chinese companies to steal foreign intellectual property. Businessmen and politicians worry that China’s dominance over these 17 elements is a strategic vulnerability, discouraging innovation and threatening national defense.

That may soon change. Encouraged by rising prices and political support, new mines are starting up around the world, most notably in Malaysia and in California, where a company called Molycorp has reopened what until the 1980s was the world’s flagship rare-earth mine.

“In five years there will be rare earths produced all over the world and China will lose its edge,” said mining analyst John Kaiser, editor of Kaiser Research Online. “Molycorp is part of that equation. They’re putting back into production what was once the largest rare-earth mine in the world. And this is a good thing because it takes away power concentrated in China.”

Located in Mountain Pass, California, about an hour west of Las Vegas, the mine sits atop mineral deposits discovered in the late 1940s by geologists looking for commercial-grade uranium. They found some of the world’s richest reserves of bastnasite, a mineral containing higher-than-usual concentrations of rare-earth elements like cerium, lanthanum and yttrium.

Rare-earth mining began at Mountain Pass in the early 1950s, and by the mid-1980s the mine supplied 60 percent of global demand and 100 percent of U.S. needs. But as Chinese production increased, operations at Mountain Pass dwindled.

Environmental problems also played a role. Salty, radioactive water kept leaking from waste evaporation ponds, leading to the mine’s closure in 2002. Mining for rare earths is classically a very environmentally destructive process, and China’s market domination is due in part to disregard for health, safety and environmental controls. The country has recently started cleaning up its messiest mines, adding to export controls in pushing rare-earth prices up.

“They were cheap,” Kaiser said, “because China was willing to subsidize the price by producing things with lower environmental and health and safety controls — all the things that we over here don’t allow.”

Six years after the Mountain Pass closure, a group of private investors purchased the mine from Chevron. Molycorp is now giving the mine a $781 million overhaul, and claims it can be both profitable and environmentally responsible, operating without sucking the area dry of water, requiring massive electrical draws or leaving behind a toxic trail.

While those promises will be difficult to fulfill, one promising sign is Molycorp’s response to pressure from the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group that initially opposed renovation. Molycorp addressed their major concern: Rather than transporting waste water offsite through a potentially leaky pipeline, the company will recycle hydrochloric acid and water used in mining, eliminating the need for waste ponds and saving on chemical costs.

While the new technique’s details are proprietary, few doubt Molycorp’s method will genuinely be cleaner than the older extraction method.
“The mining regulations in California are probably the strictest in the world,” said Navid Mojtabai of the New Mexico Institute of Mining & Technology. “If they’ve got the permits to operate then they’re already much cleaner than the Chinese.”

As China deals with its own environmental concerns and legal complaints at the World Trade Organization, Molycorp has its own lawsuit to contend with. In February an investor filed a class-action lawsuit against Molycorp, claiming the company overstated demand for its products and its production capabilities.

While none of the lawyers contacted in connection with the case would comment, several analysts dismissed it. According to rare-earth industry analyst Judith Chegwidden, director of the Roskill Consulting Group, the market volatility of 2011 left rare-earth buyers wary, temporarily reducing demand in a way that’s frustrating to investors but not evidence of Molycorp malfeasance.

Meanwhile, Molycorp is ramping up production at Mountain Pass, and looks set to produce 40,000 tons annually by the end of 2013. As the mine begins cranking out neodymium, lanthanum and other materials by the ton, the strategic vulnerability that’s caused so much concern should be eased.

On May 10 Molycorp announced larger-than-expected profits for the year’s first business quarter. All of the the material Molycorp expects to produce in 2012 has already been spoken for, said Molycorp CEO Mark Smith. “Our customers need our product,” he said. “We’re selling everything that we’re producing before it’s even out of the ground.”

---------- Post added at 05:08 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:04 PM ----------

It is never a good thing when a single country controls a vital resource. China will now have to compete with others for market share of these vital elements.
 
N

NikeX

Banned Idiot
The down side for China is contained in this quote:
Foreign companies buying rare earths from China must now pay more than twice the rate paid by companies inside China. The tiered pricing encourages companies to move factories and jobs to China, where they can be sure of supply and lower prices. Beyond the extra economic boost for China, this has made it easier for Chinese companies to steal foreign intellectual property. Businessmen and politicians worry that China’s dominance over these 17 elements is a strategic vulnerability, discouraging innovation and threatening national defense
Click to expand...

By no longer being able to encouraging companies to move factories to China with the lure of plentiful supplies of rare earth elements to where China would to be able to pirate foreign intellectual property, China is the ultimate loser in this turn of events.
 
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L

Lezt

Junior Member
NikeX said:
By no longer being able to encouraging companies to move factories to China with the lure of plentiful supplies of rare earth elements to where China would to be able to pirate foreign intellectual property, China is the ultimate loser in this turn of events.
Click to expand...

I am not sure if you are being sad that China will be unable to copy foreign IP or if you are upset that China doesn't need to copy foreign IP.

The funny thing is, you don't seem to recall that all developing country copies from more developed ones. That the US during her infancy copied from the french, germans and british. That Japan made cars which were direct clone of their american counterparts in the 1930s or how every western culture technically is built on the IP of the Romans/Greeks. Or who the hell cares about IP when the West copied things from the East back in the day.

The fact is, there are times which you copy from others and times which others copied from you. I fail to see how you find china the ultimate loser when, the USA/Russia/UK/Germany/Japan/Korea all did it at a certain point in time and these countries are still doing quite well.
 
N

NikeX

Banned Idiot
2) China will continue to clone foreign intellectual property as long as the benefits vastly outweigh the costs. The story of companies moving into China ONLY due to guaranteeing rare earth supplies are fringe companies. If you had kept up with the Davos meetings, you would have understood that all the most serious players in global business want in on China not because of rare earths, but because of the market. China will continue to benefit tremendously from this trend, both in terms of the acceleration in r&d investments, and in terms of easier access to foreign IP.
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So from your comments I take it that you are comfortable with China just taking or as you called it "cloning" foreign intellectual property without fairly compensating the creators of this foreign intellectual property. How does that work? Seems one sided to me and judging from the reaction of the world most parties agree.

Here is something else to consider: How can this be a "Chinese century" if China is doing nothing but taking? This is puzzling.
 
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