Microsoft Considers Pulling Out of China

icefaerie writes to let us know that a senior executive for Microsoft has said the firm could pull out of non-democratic countries such as China. From the article: "Fred Tipson, senior policy counsel for the computer giant, said concerns over the repressive regime might force it to reconsider its business in China. 'Things are getting bad... and perhaps we have to look again at our presence there,' he told a conference in Athens."

correction

[Anonymous Coward]

s/non-democratic countries/countries where piracy is rampant/

Commercial rasons?

[muttoj]

M$ is a commercial entity. If they decide to pull out of a market there must be an other reason then the politics stated above.

My guess: M$ cannot sue chinese citizens if they use an illegal copy.

leverage

[orbitalia]

They are just looking for some leverage to influence China to update its anti piracy laws.

The reasons

[Dystopian Rebel]

"Your Honor, my client Microsoft seeks to cancel these contracts because we object to China's
- lying
- unfair practices
- unprincipled use of its economic potential
- painfully slow turnaround time for patching bugs

Sorry, Your Honour... We can strike that last one from the record."

As westerner who atually lived in china.

[jjn1056]

This could mean so many things really.

First of all there is the crazy piracy which costs them huge dollars and causes trouble since the pirated windows spread virii like crazy. Also there so much trouble enforcing contracts. When I was running my IT business people would constantly try to renegotiate the price AFTER the project was completed. A not small amount of time people would just not be able to pay. Forgot about taking them to court.

Then legally you can't really know if you are breaking the law or not half the time. Usually if you are breaking the law come down to who you know. So it's hard for them to make project plans and then suddenly the gov't tells them they can't do something (after they spent millions).

I know a guy working on a TV movie in China. They wrote this super tame script and had it checked by the gov't censor board. Then after spending several million dollars and months of effort the gov't decided they couldn't sell the movie, because it showed foreigners beating out local Chinese people. So this makes it hard to commit the big bucks in China, you get nervous that the gov't will suddenly make some arbitrary change and put you out of business.

Yeah, it's sort of like this here in the US (and lately our gov't been closing the gap) but it's much much worse in China. Or maybe the foriegners all get the 'special' treatment, who knows? At least that is my experience, and I lived in China (all over) for a couple of years, and I have western friends there living in china as long as 12 years.

So there might not be totally humanitarian reasons for this, although there certainly could be really bad stuff here that even MS doesn't want to be associated with.

Re:All democratic companies should pull out

[Pharmboy]

I'm sure it's all political because the US couldn't survive as a country without China.

I would certainly argue that point. If you are referring to "cheap labor", then we would probably be BETTER OFF without China, and instead put resources into Mexico, at least in the mid to long term. At least if we moved jobs to Mexico, it may slow down illegal immigration as there would be more jobs. Transportation of goods would also be cheaper, and Mexico has a tremendous amount of natural resources. Moving labor to a country (usually) has the effect of raising their standard of living, which is CERTAINLY happening in China.

It would be expensive if the US quit doing business in China, mainly because we have invested so much there since the 1970s. But the US would surely survive. Who knows, we may be building computer parts in Cuba or Central America in 10 years anyway. Indonesia, Maylasia, Eastern Europe, Africa, and many others need the investment in infrastrure and would welcome being "cheap labor" while they built up their own countries.

We import from the poorest country in Europe, Moldova [moldova.org] (former Soviet Union, between Ukraine and Romania). They do great work, get paid 2 to 4 times more than their national average and welcome the opportunity. They also make some very good wines [winemoldova.com].

No Chance

[Jack Sombra]

There is no chance of MS doing this, would be commercial suicide in the long term and would have the shareholders gunning for the heads of the MS board on a platter

MS want something from China (probably better anti piracy laws/enforcement) and this is a a vague (and toothless) threat to try to get their way

Re:correction

[1u3hr]

One PR flack backed into a corner by human rights activists at a conference said they would "consider" pulling out. When he gets back to Redmond he'll be in deep shit.

I don't think

[tacokill]

I don't think you want Linux to be associated with China as your "marketing plan" to get people to switch.

Perception is not always the same as reality. So to the layman, if Linux = China - he'll stay away because he doesn't want a "Chinese" version of Windows.

Sad, but this is the level of understanding you are dealing with.