CHINA: STEALING AND POLLUTING ITS WAY TO THE TOP

From Al Fin:

China poses as a rising star in the world of commerce, industry, technology and
science. But China's recent stock market scare reveals how closely China's
success hangs upon financial and technological achievements in the west. If
China were unable to steal,
counterfeit, pirate, and reverse-engineer
superior achievements of technology and science in the west, how many decades
behind the west would China be?

The government believes that, in the
next few years, China will surpass South Korea in technical abilities, and
Germany in GDP. While China is still a minor player in the world of military
high tech, the government is putting lots of money and effort into changing
this. Expensive, and long term, efforts are being made to produce high tech
items like jet engines, missiles and military electronics. At the current rate
of progress, Chinese military technology will match that of the United States in
a decade or so.

Strategy
Page

In a mad rush to surpass the west, China is poisoning its air
and water, destroying and depleting its topsoil, stealing from its trading
partners, sending poisoned toys,food,and other merchandise overseas,
misrepresenting the size and health of its banks and state enterprises, and
becoming the world's leading destructive state computer hacker and possible
currency counterfeiter (via N. Korea).

...there is a long record in
China of sending government-directed missions overseas to buy or shamelessly
steal the best civil and military technology available, reverse engineer it, and
build an industrial complex that supports the growth of China as a commercial
and military power....The allegations against Chen Jin, of Jiaotong University
in Shanghai, are an example of the entrepreneurial approach people take toward
industrial espionage and intellectual property theft in China. Chen returned to
China after earning a Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin. In 2003, China
treated Chen like a national hero for inventing China's first signal processing
microchip. Last week, Jiaotong University dismissed him, and Chen stands accused
of hiring flocks of migrant workers with good manual dexterity and great
eyesight to scratch the name "Motorola" off chips and etch in the name of Chen's
company, "Hanxin."

Go read the whole thing over at Al Fin.