China Hires 1 Million People To Fight Fake Products 151
hackingbear writes "In a sign of the Chinese Government's intention to crack down on the black market, there were about 1 million people employed to remove fake goods from Chinese streets, according to the vice-chairman of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, Wang Jinzhen. Like our War on Drugs, the chance of that succeeding is not very high. 'I don't think it will be completely corrected, but still it will be eased,' he said. 'That's good for China and the company and for everyone in the world.' One key reason why companies keep their R&D departments out side of China is because of concern over IP protection. As an engineer, should we wish their effort genuine and successful? Or as your grandma warned you, be careful what you wish for."
Laughable, given certain traditions. (Score:5, Insightful)
All this will be is a make-work jobs program for China. The only fake goods you'll see stopped are the ones made by people from the wrong families.
Coming very soon, world brands from China (Score:5, Insightful)
Knockoffs belong to an earlier stage of commerce. China is now moving into the branding era. Haier, the largest manufacturer of major appliances in the world, based in Shandong, now sells in the US under its own name. [haieramerica.com] Yesterday, BYD Cars, a major automaker in China, opened their US headquarters. [byd.com]
Someday, Foxconn will decide they no longer need Apple.
Re:Laughable, given certain traditions. (Score:4, Insightful)
Please list the ten biggest examples of innovators[tm] whose efforts wilted because of copying.
To be clear: I want ten examples of failure not because the inventor threw his toys out of the pram ("I'm not writing any more music until u guise stop downloading pirated MP3s I'm entitled to more money!!!") but because their efforts became genuinely financially unsustainable.
Who is kidding whom here? (Score:3, Insightful)
China cracking down on counterfeit goods, eh? First off despite what the article says, I doubt China is really serious about this problem. I suspect it will be just like the problem of how China is "very serious about curbing the digital information available to it's own population," i.e. the Great firewall of China. This prevents information from getting into or or even out China. (My cousin went to China last summer and could not even post to facebook or his own blog) Yet despite China claiming they police their own citizens, in reality next to nothing actually done to control their citizen's attacking my servers on a daily basis. I average 3 to 6 hacking attempts per day. Over 90 percent of that traffic comes from China. Am I supposed to be happy that the situation isn't 10x times worse?
The Chinese government doesn't really seem to be too concerned with efforts make their citizens play nice with the rest of the world... So how are we supposed to believe they are taking the issue of black market / counterfeit goods seriously?
Curbing counterfeit goods or stopping hackers from illegal activity is a moral ethics problem as much as anything and I just don't see the Chinese government encouraging (or enforcing) it's citizens to do the right thing. This seems like another "we're getting tough on crime" PR stunt but in reality it's just business as usual.