What’s up with all this Anti-Americanism?
You don’t see Russians complaining about China’s ‘IP theft’ in the same way Americans do. If they brought the same umbrage and outrage to the table, or whined about how it isn’t ‘fair’, then I’d mock them too. But they don’t, because Russia doesn’t suffer from America’s illusions on the subject of property — illusions that are positively ridiculous in the context of instruments of warfare. Can you picture it, an American sailor-lawyer standing on a burning carrier deck, reading from a copy of the US code and shaking his fist at the Chinese ‘Copyhawks’ circling above?
Intellectual property is how people get rewarded for their efforts. Eventually China will need to enforce it to ensure their domestic innovators can get paid for their work.
IP is one of the means advocated for the purpose of encouraging innovation, sure. But as you’ve identified the rationale is pragmatic, in service of the broader, long-term ‘national interest’. Outside those contexts in which it serves China’s interests — and respecting Sikorsky’s IP is certainly not in China’s interest — we can expect them to have very little time for the idea, much as the US government has very little time for the domestic laws of those nations in which it conducts economic espionage on behalf of American companies and interests.
Of course there is a routine when it comes to enforcing IP (or anything else) upon those who persist in not dancing to the tune of the dominant power, a routine that includes sanctions and culminates in ‘regime change’, but fortunately China is far too powerful to be moved by such measures. Alas those African nations seeking to distribute low-cost HIV medicines to their citizens aren’t so fortunate.
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