posted on Sep, 16 2004 @ 04:33 AM
Originally posted by FredT
Turn about is totaly fair play IMHO. What happens when China becomes dependant on imported grain to feed its people? Im not trying to make a threat,
but China's agriculture is on the verge of collapse due to decreasing water supply. Where are they going to get it all thier grain? From the US of
course where we pay farmers not to grow it.
Without going in to the fact that US subsidizes their grain farmers and claims it's to offset overproduction but in reality it's to give the US an
unfair advantage when it comes to trade (your tax money keep grain prices artificially low on the world market so your grain farmers can compete). But
don't kid yourself - the USA isn't the world's only large grain producer - there's plenty of other countries for China to get grain from. Brazil
exports more grain to China than the US does. As an example Canada produced 22 million tons of wheat, the US produced 33 million tons of wheat in 2000
- the US was 2nd in production and export in 99-00.
Here's some info on the China grain trade:
Every 1% of grain consumption in china equals 2% of worldwide trade in grain. And China will become a net importer of grain soon
according to analists. In a
study from 1995, the USDA projected that China's grain self sufficiency will
decrease from 95% to 91% by 2005 but the numbers over the past 8 years have been lower than these projections. Although there has been (and will
continue to be) a longterm growth trend in China's food imports,
China
Daily says this is nothing to be alarmed about, and China is not a nation facing a food crisis.
China Business Weekly also echoes these
sentiments.
But back to the original poster: it's true. China does not have the same copyright and patent laws as the rest of the world; and they haven't signed
a number of international treaties in resepct to these. China is a massive producer and proliferator of pirated software and copied product designs.
Although recently, a few years after after
China joined the WTO, and in
efforts to increase foreign investment, China has begun to
crack down on some areas of
copyright infringement. Although that's going to be a difficult thing to do in a nation where people don't understand or value the concept of
private property...
I know from my work in the IT industry, you don't factor China into the equation when you make a chinese version of a software product. You consider
Singapore, Taiwan, etc. Hopefully that will change eventually, but it will be a long process considering China is still a pseudo Communist country.