[photopress:IT_Christopher_Padilla_load_of_bollocks.jpg,full,alignright]It is very difficult to write this without losing one’s temper and saying rude and hurtful things about the American IT industry.
The United States has warned China it risks ‘technological isolation’ for developing unique technical standards of its own that are shutting out foreign competition.
Having taken a tablet to calm myself down I can write that for thirty years I have seen American companies desperately developing unique technical standards of its own so that it could screw other countries for royalties.
No industry, none, has acted the role of robber baron which such consistency.
It has never quite forgiven Tim Berners-Lee and CERN for not copyrighting the Internet so that users could be screwed for money. The legal advice given to all innovation departments in the United States is copyright and we will work out whether it is operable later.
The new technology which has them so irate is TD-SCDMA which is a new 3G standard. and despite what the Americans say it has been offered to other countries and some have accepted it. At least they will not have to pay monstrous royalties to the United States.
[photopress:IT_Christopher_Padilla_load_of_bollocks2.jpg,full,alignleft]Now, Under Secretary of Commerce Christopher Padilla, seen in our illustration says that despite widely accepted international standards, China has developed its own standards for mobile phones. And, he added with a lack of morality or, to be charitable, basic understanding, it has done this ‘amid a lack of transparency and due process.’
If Christopher Padilla said that with a straight face he is not a man with whom one would wish to play poker.
He went on. ‘These requirements certainly provide Chinese domestic companies an unfair advantage, but they also carry great risks for China.’
Taking the piece by piece. How is not having to pay daft royalties to American companies an unfair advantage? What law, what ethic, states that the world must always pay the United States danegeld in order to improve itself? And to imply a threat of ‘great risk for China’ is disgusting.
To demonstrate that great risk he said that in the 1980s Japan thought its market was large enough to justify unique technology standards that would eventually move the world in its direction, to the benefit of its companies.
‘It was wrong,’ he said.
In what specific instance was it wrong? I can think of three examples. In the case of the United States, given time I would come up with three thousand.
Christopher Padilla went on, ‘Now China runs the same risk of turning itself into a lonely island of technological isolation, cut off from the world by government-mandated, China-unique standards that are out of line with where the market-driven global economy is heading.’
Such nonsense.
Christopher Padilla said many American companies have expressed concern about security standards for information technology products that made it costly for them to enter the Chinese market.
He said it appeared that Beijing favored a China-specific third-generation (3G) mobile phone standard over internationally recognized standards.
‘While China’s approach may appear to provide a competitive advantage in the short term, it in fact inhibits collaboration, limits product development, reduces consumer choice, and hinders China’s competitiveness and growth.’
Politicians learn to speak this way in the cradle. Note he does not mention a royalty has to be paid on every mobile phone made and sold in China which does not use the new TD-SCDMA China standards. He probably cut that bit out. It would have made his speech too long.
Source: AFP