> the Chinese don't have a right to ignore other countries' IP if they want those same countries to respect theirs.
But that "right" is a "moral right", that us perhaps want to impose on it. Not sure if it is an enforceable law.
If we stick to the moral approach. China might see it as hypocrisy as well. From their point of view they can say "well you stole to improve your industry, you burned coal like it was nobody's business to ramp up your steel mills, now you tell us we have to be green, and waste all this money duplicating R&D effort -- that's not fair, and it is our _right_ to do however we please".
Now practically I don't agree with that, but from a more rational position, I could see their point, as well.
It also seemed rather silly when we make fun of Chinese for stealing our high tech technology (stealth, radar, etc). It would seem pretty irrational and wasteful from their point of view _not_ to spend $100k to bribe some spy and instead do spend $10b developing stuff from scratch.
If we stick to the moral approach. China might see it as hypocrisy as well. From their point of view they can say "well you stole to improve your industry, you burned coal like it was nobody's business to ramp up your steel mills, now you tell us we have to be green, and waste all this money duplicating R&D effort -- that's not fair, and it is our _right_ to do however we please".
No one has a problem with China emulating the things the US did to grow its economy that were good, such as allowing women to work and developing a highly educated workforce. However, we would not want them to use slavery or ignore the environmental impact of coal use because we now know that those were bad things. Repeating our mistakes is bad for the world and bad for China, as the Chinese are seeing for themselves the pollution derived from over-reliance on coal.
But that "right" is a "moral right", that us perhaps want to impose on it. Not sure if it is an enforceable law.
If we stick to the moral approach. China might see it as hypocrisy as well. From their point of view they can say "well you stole to improve your industry, you burned coal like it was nobody's business to ramp up your steel mills, now you tell us we have to be green, and waste all this money duplicating R&D effort -- that's not fair, and it is our _right_ to do however we please".
Now practically I don't agree with that, but from a more rational position, I could see their point, as well.
It also seemed rather silly when we make fun of Chinese for stealing our high tech technology (stealth, radar, etc). It would seem pretty irrational and wasteful from their point of view _not_ to spend $100k to bribe some spy and instead do spend $10b developing stuff from scratch.