As China strives for leadership in the world’s most advanced industries, it sees commercial jetliners — planes that may someday challenge the best from Boeing and Airbus — as a top prize.
And no Western company has been more aggressive in helping China pursue that dream than one of the aviation industry’s biggest suppliers of jet engines and airplane technology, General Electric.
On Friday, during the visit of the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, to the United States, G.E. plans to sign a joint-venture agreement in commercial aviation that shows the tricky risk-and-reward calculations American corporations must increasingly make in their pursuit of lucrative markets in China.
G.E., in the partnership with a state-owned Chinese company, will be sharing its most sophisticated airplane electronics, including some of the same technology used in Boeing’s new state-of-the-art 787 Dreamliner.
For G.E., the pact is a chance to build upon an already well-established business in China, where the company has booming sales of jet engines, mainly to Chinese airlines that are now buying Boeing and Airbus planes. But doing business in China often requires Western multinationals like G.E. to share technology and trade secrets that might eventually enable Chinese companies to beat them at their own game — by making the same products cheaper, if not better.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/business/global/18plane.html?_r=2&ref=business
For the most part, Western aviation executives say the Chinese are simply too far behind in both civilian and military airplane technology to cause any real fears anytime soon — although it does put pressure on Boeing and Airbus to continue to innovate and stay technologically ahead of China.
Unbelievable.For the most part, Western aviation executives say the Chinese are simply too far behind in both civilian and military airplane technology to cause any real fears anytime soon — although it does put pressure on Boeing and Airbus to continue to innovate and stay technologically ahead of China.
This is how capital works. The Chinese can pay and our companies sell. They are concerned with profits, not national security. Is it GE's job to protect this country?
No... but they should be concerned about the longterm competitive nature of their company, and look out for longterm shareholder value.
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This is how capital works. The Chinese can pay and our companies sell. They are concerned with profits, not national security. Is it GE's job to protect this country?
August 4, 1914: Great Britain declares war on Germany and Austria-Hungary, joining in the start of World War I, or The Great War. Radio traffic across the Atlantic Ocean swells as the Germans cut Allied cable telegraphs and governments and businesses have even more to discuss.
June 4, 1915: Nally proposes to General Electric Company that GE and American Marconi organize a joint monopoly for the production and operation of wireless communications technology (GE’s scientists and engineers have developed powerful means of transmitting Morse code and voice by both electromechanical and electron-tube means).
April 8, 1919: Captain Stanford C. Hooper and Admiral W. H. G. Bullard, U. S. Navy, meet with General Electric Company executives to ask that they not sell their Alexanderson alternators to the Marconi companies. This marks the beginning of negotiations by which GE would buy American Marconi and organize what would become the Radio Corporation of America.
David Sarnoff Library
Is it GE's job to protect this country?
If companies were to do that, they would worry about providing jobs that would enable Americans to afford their products.
This is how capital works. The Chinese can pay and our companies sell. They are concerned with profits, not national security. Is it GE's job to protect this country?
Are you serious?
After awhile, it gets hard to respect American Big Business.
This is how capital works. The Chinese can pay and our companies sell. They are concerned with profits, not national security. Is it GE's job to protect this country?
Don't you think it's a bad idea to sell military technology to a country that we might have to face on the battlefield one day?
I cannot believe that I am hearing from Conservatives a call on the government to stop a business from entering a new market!
And of course it is a bad idea, but somebody had to take GE's side.
I cannot believe that I am hearing from Conservatives a call on the government to stop a business from entering a new market!
So much for "comparative advantage." And this is just arrogance:
This is how capital works. The Chinese can pay and our companies sell. They are concerned with profits, not national security. Is it GE's job to protect this country?
Don't you think it's a bad idea to sell military technology to a country that we might have to face on the battlefield one day?
Unfortunately this is true.
"Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains."
-Thomas Jefferson
This being said, I do not ever really see the US going to war with China.
Why do you assume we may go to war with them one day? Has China been aggressively doing war games with its client states near the US to send American a message? Has it been taking the anti-US side in any dispute near the US?
Why not? We fought with them during the Korean War. That's not that long ago. We've almost butted heads with them on several occasions during the Cold War over issues such as American support for Taiwan and Chinese support for North Vietnam. The country is rapidly industrializing, and, as such, will increasingly compete for resources with Western countries. It's also clear that the PLA has its tentacles into much of the decision making in the country, including what industries to pursue under the nation's industrial policy. It's rapidly modernizing its military, and it has a rising cadre of younger communist bureaucrats who are more nationalistic and antagonistic towards foreign, especially American, interests. There's also been an increase in complaints recently from foreign businesses conducting operations in the country that they're not being dealt with on a fair and equal basis with Chinese firms.
So I see plenty of reasons to proceed cautiously with the Chinese, and not assume they're not a threat. There are many similarities between China's ascendance today and Japan's during the early part of the last century. Japan went from ally during WW1 to foe during WWII to friend again (after we won, in spite of them being good students in Western military strategy and technology).
Our conflicts with them occurred as Mao was attempting to bring them to the world stage, and his actions were intended to make the world take notice of China as a real world player. Now we are dealing with a world economy and of course US firms are not going to be treated fairly in respect to state-owned businesses. It is a communist countr for God's sake. Did they not know this when they rushed there to take advantage of the cheap labor?
In regards to future war, the Chinese own our debt and we are their biggest consumer base. It will serve them none at all to go to war with us. Thus they will posture and threaten. All they really want is respect, and to them the only way to show this is for us to end the selling of arms to Taiwan. If we did so we would find China very cooperative on a number of issues.
Indonesia warned on Sunday that maritime conflicts in Asia could spiral out of control and threaten regional stability, as Southeast Asian nations sought common ground on the disputed South China Sea.
Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines and China have disputed control of areas such as the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, potentially home to oil reserves and near key shipping lanes. Vietnam has had skirmishes with China over the issue.
Southeast Asia seeks common ground on sea disputes with China | World | Reuters
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