Red China has been stealing America’s technology and intellectual property for years. We know that in part because a few reporters, like Lou Dobbs who warned this country about the Chinese threat for more than a decade:
From CNN, June 24, 2008:
LOU DOBBS: Well, as we’ve reported here, literally for years, there are more than 3,500 communist Chinese front companies operating in this country with the specific purpose of targeting sensitive American intelligence and information technology. Cyber attacks against U.S. military networks soared by 55 percent last year.
Despite such warnings, official Washington has long been oblivious to the billions of dollars in annual rip-offs suffered by business and industry; specifically the United States Trade Representative reported this year that “Chinese theft of American IP [intellectual property] currently costs between $225 billion and $600 billion annually.”
Shamefully, America makes it easy for them to steal our most valuable secrets, from military to industrial technology. One of the stupidest is the shocking number of Chinese students welcomed into our universities where they study the latest science. From there, some advance to employment in the top American companies. The practice is a continuing security threat — plus, young Americans are pushed to the side by schools that want the full tuition paid by foreigners.
Clearly the trend is going the wrong way, indicated by more than 350,000 Chinese students filling US university classrooms in 2016. Why allow any when the policy endangers America’s safety? Zero Chinese students is the right number.
Communist China is using every strategy in the book to undermine and surpass the United States.
But lately President Trump has brought an enforcement mindset to the trade relationship with the ChiComs.
And not a moment too soon. One recent example has been China’s brazen rip-off of an American pipe company, stealing its identity and logo to peddle shoddy products.
Below, Charlotte Pipe and Foundry has been in business for more than a century, but it is now being assaulted by the Chinese theft of its good name.
The theft shows the basic lawlessness of Red China on the global stage.
US takes on China over marketplace ‘cheating’, By William La Jeunesse, Fox News, January 22 2019
Charlotte Pipe and Foundry was founded in North Carolina 117 years ago. The company is one of only three surviving domestic pipe manufacturers.
Company officials attending a foreign trade show recently were stunned when one looked over to see the Charlotte name, colors and logo posted above a booth advertising a table of iron and plastic fittings stamped with the Charlotte name.
“It just represents the broader Chinese strategy. They don’t recognize international norms when it comes to IP [intellectual property] protection,” said Charlotte vice president Bradford Mullen. “They are constantly pushing the envelope and we just think it is a threat to our company and our country.”
Charlotte sued the Chinese company Yitai Plastics of Shanghai in 2017 for allegedly stealing its trademark. Records show Yitai registered the ‘Charlotte’ trademark in China in 2007 and in Singapore in 2015. Mullen said most countries Yitai would have had to stipulate in legal documents the integrity of the trademark. Not China.
“We see that across a broad range of industries where they’ve stolen technology, they steal intellectual property, they counterfeit products. It’s rampant,” said Mullen.
Charlotte Pipe also helped take the Chinese before the International Trade Commission for dumping cast iron pipe fittings on the U.S. market. The commission ruled in the Americans’ favor in August, finding that the Chinese manufacturers had used state subsidies to undersell the fair market value of U.S. products by as much as 360 percent.
“When you have a paranoid regime that is not feeling bound by the rule of law — they cheat,” said Jim Lewis of the Center for Strategic Studies.
“Five years ago, people were unwilling to confront China. And now nobody feels that way.”
In a scathing June report, the White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy concluded that the People’s Republic of China steals critical U.S. technologies through physical theft, cyberespionage, counterfeiting, evasion of U.S. export laws and the forced transfer of intellectual property from U.S. companies hoping to enter the Chinese market.
“People may not say it publicly, but yeah, the president is doing the right thing. We need to confront China and now is a good time to do it. The longer we wait the harder it will be,” said Lewis, a former Commerce Department official specializing in high-tech trade with China.
President Trump set a March 2 deadline to conclude trade talks with China. Next week’s round in Washington is considered critical if the U.S. is to get the sweeping type of structural reforms it called for. Recent reports suggest China is not willing to level the playing field with U.S. and European competitors or give up subsidies to the big domestic manufacturers who have reshaped their economy by massive exports to the West.
