China Poses Trade Worry as It Gains in Technology

[papau]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/13/technology/13china.html?hp

China Poses Trade Worry as It Gains in Technology
By STEVE LOHR


To high-technology companies, China has been a land of seemingly pure promise in recent years. Not only is it a fast-growing consumer market, but it has also become a low-cost workshop for assembling technology products for American, European and Japanese concerns.
But as China moves to expand its own technology industries, the government has taken unusual steps that are leading to new trade tensions with the United States, according to Silicon Valley executives, trade experts and United States officials. These measures include efforts to develop Chinese software standards for wireless computers, the introduction of exclusive technology formats for future generations of cellphones and DVD players - even tax policies that favor computer chips made in China and sold in the Chinese market.

"The issue here is what path will China take as it develops its technology industries," said Bruce P. Mehlman, a former technology policy official in the Bush administration who is the executive director of the Computer Systems Policy Project, an industry group. "Will it take a more global, market-based approach, or will it try to change the rules and disadvantage others?"

Concerns over China's strategies intensified last month when it announced that foreign computer and chip makers that want to sell certain kinds of wireless devices in the country would have to use Chinese encryption software and co-produce their goods with a designated list of Chinese companies.<snip>

The Chinese standard, called EVD, appears to be "more an escape hatch around the patent pools of the established companies than a technology breakthrough," said Richard Doherty, president of the Envisioneering Group, a technology consulting firm.<snip>

[el_gato]

1. what do they expect

the ceo types over here constantly work to rig the system in their favor why would they expect the chinese to act any different?

[papau]

2. GOP Greed is good - but fair requires laws and regulations and treaties

:-)