To be honest, the way you put ut, the story feels OK to me.
There are many truly bad examples, e.g. the arm china story, but engineers doing their thing is not one of them.
This is engineers deliberately taking tech to somewhere where they know IP laws won't be enforced.
It's not like I'm saying they can learn calculus here and then go to China and use calculus to design things.
It's that I'm saying they design a very specific thing, a very specific way, for hire, then go make that exact specific thing, that same specific way.
If it were in any other country but China, it wouldn't be allowed to happen.
Unless there is something explicitly stated in your contract banning you from taking the "know-how" in your brains and use it elsewhere (so long as you don't breach any patent) then it sounds there is nothing technically wrong.
I think it's a cultural thing as well, some sort of hustle culture, as the Chinese citizens that moved to NZ when I grew up loved to flout rules & laws around things like the property markets etc - one big problem was Chinese nationals buying up as much NZ baby formula & milk poweder as they could get, hiking the price & selling/sending it to China, so much that NZ experienced shortages for Kiwi mothers trying to feed their babies, so much so that supermarkets had to instate a X per person policy. When I worked in one during 1st year uni I would get literally screamed at in Mandarin by angry and aggressive Chinese nationals with trolleys full of baby formula.
And keep in mind that all of that started only because of the big scare where Chinese baby formula was found to have melamine in it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal) killing 6 babies, affecting hundreds of thousands. All because Sanlu's execs wanted more $$$ so they cut their product.
I really doubt this unless all the inputs are commoditised. Industrial espionage usually fails because if you don’t have the know how to make the tools that make the tools it’s difficult to impossible to literally copy it. Not saying what you’re saying doesn’t happen, it does, all the time. But usually the engineering is substantially different if only because different things are cheap or expensive, or just unavailable.
> If it were in any other country but China, it wouldn't be allowed to happen.
Historically, the US, Japan, Korea, Taiwan all did it. No doubt Vietnam does it now too. Not like they have an excellent civil legal system. Joys of working in developing countries.
Smart and knowledgable people in a certain field, but who are slightly stuck, can be helped by a few tiny details. If someone can provide a specific manual or piece of documentation, or just a photo copy or image of some key detail then those smart and knowledgable people can pass the hurdle and continue.
IIRC the USA did plenty of that.
But I've never built the exact same castle, with the exact same Floorplan, with the exact same plans. That's what I'm highlighting that I've seen several times.
A cool aside, I love this song by Watsky called "cardboard castles". Having done this for 20 years (build "cardboard castles") I identify with it.
I worked at a large tech co with an assembly line in China and experienced this first hand. A routine scan of one of our calibration machines turned up a Trojan with a copy of all calibration software squirreled away. Fortunately nothing is network connected there, but it was obvious someone was planning to come back for it. The stash had our calibration software and the factory’s proprietary control software on it. Both companies sent security to watch the machine for 48 hours straight until a hard drive shredder could be procured to mutually assure each party no software would leak. It was nuts, but apparently common.
Just Google "Chinese protectionist" and then any industry. The Chinese government has been actively targeting everything from CNC machine tools to medical devices and semiconductors for decades. Some industries with more success than others. Anything they import, especially industrial equipment like textile looms, cnc machines, semiconductor equipment, etc. There are big, long term, well funded pushes to manufacture indigenous versions of just about everything. Airplanes, jet engines, computer chips, industrial equipment, on and on
A IP is not a 'natural' concept, most cultures do not have it. Better question might be how did IP become a cultural thing in the West?
the deal is: you can use our cheap labor force, but we can use your ideas
It's not long till the capital class claims ownership of your brain too. /s
If you remove uniforms from a soccer match, you can celebrate each individual player's goal. But the team that forgets they are (or should be) playing a team game will be obliterated.
