I was going to start this thread a while ago, I just hesitated somehow. It seems the ripple effects of the arrest a while back of the Huawei executive in Canada, with the US having requested an extradition related I think to Iran, is rattling around. At least with the news in Canada.
So China has had so much work subcontracted out to them in electronics, for one, that they are now a powerhouse for technical upgrades that they can build anything they want into it. This supposedly includes the hidden property of giving China back door access to information flowing through the networks they make.
I think Australia and New Zealand have reversed contracts to use Huawei for system upgrades in their countries, and experts have been warning us here in Canada about the same thing.
A month or so ago an executive with Huawei was arrested in Canada, really because the United States wanted it done, and there are proceedings to have her extradited. She was on bail giving treats to reporters who appeared at her house in Canada.
Now Canadians are getting arrested or at least detained in China, and I mean several. With this latest one, the charges were upgraded recently and the death penalty applied, even though the case has been ongoing for a few years. Look it, if he really is dealing large amounts of methamphetamine than I am not going to bleed all that much for the fucker, but you maybe see how it applies to events.
I ask where anyone thinks this with China is going, will be in a few years, or maybe has been for a while now. How pervasive is their technical infiltration? Might countries like India be getting affected? They have their own burgeoning tech industry, but I understand they are more of a US ally (tech support for this computer I am writing with is through them).
I taught in China for nine years, and while I had a lot of fun most of the time and most of my friends were Chinese, I noticed a steady increase in Chinese nationalism, to the point when my last year of teaching one of my students asked me if I was spy because Chinese TV had “warned” people that foreigners who were too interested in learning Chinese might be spies.
Outsourcing technical work to China is always of concern. I spent a summer working in a Nike factory, and the reason Nike had that factory in Oregon was because these were new shoes and they didn’t want a Chinese company stealing the designs. One of the reasons weapons manufacturing is such a high percentage of American manufacturing (25% last I checked) is for the same reason.
in this op ed, one strategy mentioned is possibly offering greater recognition of Taiwan. this I was thinking over the last number of years and I know the United States used to be limited in how much arms they were willing to sell the Taiwanese. I read a number of years ago they had a WW2 era Drum class submarine.
Also, when was the last time anyone made any noise about the Chinese building up the Spratly Islands? Several countries claim sovereignty over them, and the Chinese just showed up as though they were just theirs.
In similar fashion I had heard something from years ago that during the cold war, the Warsaw pact was at least partially dependent on microchips from the west.
The chips the Polish military used for communications had a feature built in the Poles didn’t know about such that the west could just send a command that would have shut everything down.
Yeah, I think that’s a fair comparison. Most major corporations in China are partially State-owned. Along with profit, there is the additional objective of increasing power and influence, especially in the East. All State officials are military trained and think like military strategists lol. They also don’t need to compromise their foreign policies due to differing public opinions like democratic nations since it’s a one party state and all media outlets are State-owned.
Correct. What do you think about the rule that all companies who open plants in China have to share their technology?
Have we not learned anything:
From an article from Wikipedia on the MiG-15.
"The Soviet aviation minister Mikhail Khrunichev and aircraft designer A. S. Yakovlev suggested to Premier Joseph Stalin that the USSR buy the conservative but fully developed Nene engines from Rolls-Royce (having been alerted to the fact that the U.K. Labour government wanted to improve post-war UK-Russia foreign relations) for the purpose of copying them in a minimum of time. Stalin is said to have replied, “What fool will sell us his secrets?”
However, he gave his consent to the proposal and Mikoyan, engine designer Vladimir Klimov, and others travelled to the United Kingdom to request the engines. To Stalin’s amazement, the British Labour government and its Minister of Trade, Sir Stafford Cripps, were perfectly willing to provide technical information and a license to manufacture the Rolls-Royce Nene. Sample engines were purchased and delivered with blueprints. Following evaluation and adaptation to Russian conditions, the windfall technology was tooled for mass-production as the Klimov RD-45 to be incorporated into the MiG-15."
And similarly today, this country has sold it status out for pure greed.
The latest here is that the Canadian ambassador to China is saying that Meng Wanzhou has a good chance of getting sprung. The deadline to file an extradition request is January 30, getting close.
It seems that we are sort of stuck between the US and China. We are a signatory to Iran sanctions, but I wish the US could just arrest her or someone over there, or maybe just sanction directly the Chinese.
I know that at least Canadian Universities are jam packed full of Chinese nationals. China at least was second world, and it is seen by some as a responsibility of first world countries to help the rest of the world.
Then it is like the tiger cub growing into an adult one…
It seems that Canada’s ambassador to China now claims he misspoke.
Anyway, there is now a shift towards Canada using Nokia (Finland) or Ericsson (Sweden) for the 5th generation communications system.
I was listening on Monday to my local campus radio station, and a current affairs program, The Taylor Report, mentioned the issue. the host was saying that all this uproar with Huawei is the result of talks among the 5 eyes. they are Canada, the US, Britain, Australia and New Zealand. the host poignantly pointed out that these are controlled as white countries and seemed to insinuate that it is anti Chinese sentiments that are simmering at the heart of this dispute. I myself hate to think this slant could be true.
Somewhat of a derail of my own thread, but this story indicates that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, from the US, was involved in the investigation. Are they affected by the shutdown?
Anyway, if we have to rely on the US heavily for counterterrorism, maybe that is an argument we should just go along and arrest who they want. The position to be in perturbs me.
Further to my having posted that ‘The Taylor Report’ on CIUT, University of Toronto radio, had some mention of this subject, there was this evening a more comprehensive covering of this.
Look under audio and wait for this evening’s episode to be posted. Original broadcasts are Mondays at 17:00 Eastern North America, at www.CIUT.fm
After reading this, I am left to wonder if really American policy is more long term visionary than I had previously thought… Trump is hard bargaining trade, but is he actually more shrewd than some people give him credit for? At times he is a bungling stooge, but does he really have great vision?
I think that’s complete crap from someone who doesn’t know what the hell he’s dealing with. So no, I don’t think you have to worry about that being true.
China is extremely opportunistic and nationalistic, no matter how nice Western countries try to play–they do not think, act, or behave in ways we recognize except in the superficial ways.