Conformity to Chinese Practice

On a message thread about manufacturing in China, someone said the usual thing about Chinese disregarding our patents and ripping off our IP. No doubt this is a problem. Let's remember, though: the main thing patents & copyrights confer is a right to sue, which is minimal protection from a determined infringer whether in China, America, or wherever.

Coming out of this economic crisis, I am thinking that we will are going to be adjusting ourselves to Chinese ways of doing business more than we think. Their movement toward conformity with our practice on IP and other things has probably gone as far as it will for now. In China they have the surpluses, and we in the U.S. with our deficits are going to them cap in hand.

Already I get from my Chinese partners the confidence in their own ways that the Japanese exhibited at their peak in the 80s: "Why should we listen to you? Look at the bad situation you're in."

As far as IP theft is concerned, I have mixed feelings. Historically Americans have not always been on the side of the angels: Dickens notoriously had trouble getting paid for his books in the US. Funny how becoming the major producer of IP has turned us so righteous about IPR.

I love the story about English and Chinese potters learning from each other by copying each other in the 17th century. The English copied the Chinese, the Chinese thought the copies were great and they copied the copies, and so on, to the enrichment of both sides'production.

And the Chinese have a respectable tradition of copying going back to the Han dynasty. After the Qin destroyed all the written literature of the country, Han scribes set about recovering by copying the remnants.

In our world, there is so much sampling in music and visual arts that, anyway, originality belongs in quotes.