Almost all of those "gains" came from stolen western IPs and labor exploitation.
this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2024
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Yeah, but that's capitalism in general, which is what people mean when they say "free market".
USA's brand of capitalism has IP protections, such as patent, copyrights, and trademarks. None of which China actually follows.
China is well known to conduct significant corporate espionage. (IE: hackers targeting corporations like Microsoft or Sony, not really people with "critical national secrets" but instead software they'd rather keep secret). China also hacks for national-security purposes too I'm sure.
I mean, still better than the Russian hackers or North Korean ones that focus on randomware. China at least is trying to get economic benefits out of it, but... its clearly built up on a lot of stolen tech.
Which are frequently abused by those in power.
They protect the companies who have money, not the people who generally create those ideas and technologies.
Abuse or not, Chinese corporate espionage is well crossing the line.
Say what you will about "Copyright", but we all know that when China hacks Google and steals source code, that's "unfair" and well crossing the line of the minor copyright violations we normally discuss here on Lemmy (or other internet). I'm not talking about simple piracy, I'm talking about fucking hacking and stealing years of hard work / programming source code from major US Companies here.
This isn't some performance artist or protester trying to "download a car", so to speak through piracy. This is literally China's MO of corporate espionage. Steal everything to launch their country into the future. Steal the hard work of honest programmers trying to give their systems an advantage over the competition.
I'm not saying that what lots of Chinese companies (often with their governments backing or even insistence) isn't terrible... what I'm saying is they're not stealing from angels.
They're basically just doing what American (and other western companies) are doing, just without the "gentlemen's agreement" that the west uses to keep the poors from getting uppity.
You think those companies are giving the people who actually create the things they make billions (or trillions) off of a fair portion? No, they're taking all that hard work and paying a pittance for it.
There is no moral high ground here, just lower and lower levels as each tries to out scum each other.
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And currency manipulation
First two are communication platforms with direct spying concerns and the car industry always was a proxy for Tank production.
Yeah. If China is a better country at manufacturing EVs than the USA, that means they can make more war material than us. That's absolutely a national security threat.
The 3rd case is more of honest competition. But it's a huge concern to any warfighter. USA won WW2 by making more vehicles than the Nazis and Japanese. If China can out-manufacture us, we absolutely have to consider the new realities of the modern battlefield
It's a well known fact that Nazi tanks were a lot better than American tanks. We just outnumbered the shit out of the Nazis.
I don't think EV production will lead to tanks like how WW2 did. But EV production almost certainly is a modern drone / Li-ion battery.
Actually EVs collect a huge amount of information including video and audio of the participants. It's a huge privacy issue regardless of manufacturer country but you obviously should distinguish the difference between a foreign country collecting information on your citizens compared to your own. Neither is good but one clearly has more authoritarian tendencies and less scruples about finding and coercing compliance with any means at their disposal.
There isn't anything inherent with an EV to necessitate video/audio recording capabilities.
If you're concerned about an EV having that ability, you should be equally concerned about traditional vehicles as well.
I literally read something this morning on how you can now get cybersecurity insurance for your car. For a fucking CAR. Why tf do the circumstances exist that that's even a possible market?
Honestly why should I care if China has more military power than the U.S. It's not like the USA is doing going things with our military power. We can't even stop a genocide.
Because China is about to attack Taiwan, which has 60%+ of the world computer chips.
That means no iPhones, no Snapdragon (Android phones), no XBox, no PS5, no AMD (Servers), no AMD/Xilinx (aka: F35), no NVidia GPUs if that attack goes off successfully. It'd be a major effect on the US technology sector, which is where I'm employed (and where many others are employed). This is a vital economic and technological issue.
If we lose the upcoming China vs Taiwan fight, its not just like "Oh I feel bad" like the Ukrainian situation (trust me, I'm hugely supportive of the Ukrainians). But Ukraine doesn't have a major economy / export tied to the USA's economy like Taiwan does.
China has made something like 400 nuclear weapons in the past 5 years or so. They're preparing for something. The current bets are on a Taiwan invasion, which has been a sorespot for them for the past century.
I don't think China is going to use those nukes per se, they just want nuclear parity with "somebody". So its clear they're likely planning to attack USA (or some other major nuclear power), which would coincide with a Taiwan attack (USA would almost certainly rush to protect this vital economic center for us, leading into a China vs USA war). The nukes are the just-in-case option for China, its likely going to try to stay conventional.
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China didn’t even let US apps and sites in in the first place though. Hell they don’t even have TikTok but a different app. They straight copied Google with Baidu, Amazon with Alibaba, and same for so many others. Never allowed Facebook nor Twitter. Then they complain when the US debate whether to limit theirs operating here a decade or more later. Meanwhile china has hacked and stolen an insane amount of IP including full on fighter jet designs. And are the highest source of hacking by far, as they have been for a decade. ~~This is a weak argument based in ignorance. I guess that’s to be expected from a self proclaimed token boomer~~
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Welcome to geopolitics 101. Is your main legitimate rival gaining a ton of power across the world due to aggressive gains in technology? Slow their access to the market until you have time to catch up.
It's not like anyone should feel sorry for China during all this, unless you just want to forget their active genocide and all the horrible things they've done to Tibet and Hong Kong.
The USA has never had a free market and doesn’t really claim to, certainly not internationally. It’s the people who get a boner when looking at a snake on a yellow background that claim the USA has a free market.
It’s simply stunning to think that somewhere a vote will go to Trump because the government tried to protect American elections and privacy.
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