The Trouble with China's Approach to I/P

According to a January 9, 2004 article in the New York Times Magazine by Ted C. Fishman,

What makes China so troubling for American and other foreign companies is that the country is both a potential rival, with an alternative legal approach to intellectual property that limits their prospects in China and weakens their competitive strength globally, and a haven for pirates and counterfeiters.

* * *

China's failure to police industry and to protect intellectual-property
acts, in effect, like one of the greatest industrial subsidies in the world. Chinese manufacturers and industries freely exploit foreign ideas and
technologies. ''China helps distribute technology that has already been paid for by the developed world, often by companies, but also by taxpayers who support the government labs where much of the most important industrial technology begins,'' says Oded Shenkar, a professor of business at Ohio State University. For the most part,
China fears no repercussions from its actions because the size and potential of its markets give China an undiminished (for now) power to lure the world's most advanced technology to its shores.