Quote:
Originally Posted by ET2SN
It isn't naivety, its greed. If you really want to drive your returns, you farm out the labor to where it costs pennies on the dollar. This is what hollowed-out the labor pools in the western countries. If the PLA was also stealing your intellectual property, as long as it produced cheaper goods, that was OK as long as you maintained your profit margins. 
Cheap over seas labor became part of doing business. |
Thats the company logic behind it, but especially European and here especially the German governments also had high flying idealistic ambitions, thinking that change in China (and before: Russia) to democracy could be boostered, even enforced by close economic cooperation. The Germans even have a term for it and are damn proud of it, both regarding Russia and regarding China: "Wandel durch Handel", translating into [political and social] "change by trade". Germany until today pays China over 80 millions in non-declared development aid!!! Although the defenders of this misconception argue that this has no longer been the case since 2010, China is still officially listed by the authorities as a developing country, this status nevertheless results in unilateral financial transfers that are de facto equivalent to development aid, even if they no longer have to be formally identified as such. In a sense, they are "inclusive".