The president of my international employer told us Friday that a partner company, which had a 400 million per year contract with the PRC, suddenly lost it. It turns out that the PRC paid a low-level H1B engineer from middle Europe to download all the Intellectual Property and sell I to the PRC. The PRC then built an exact duplicate plant and is now producing its own material. The PRC didn’t bother cancelling the contract or with any further communications whatsoever. There are no IP rights in China and contract law is for other people.
The H1B engineer was arrested in Australia; apparently thinking he had gotten away with it.
My point is; anybody who sells anything to China, especially those who open a plant there, has sewage effluent for brains.
BTW, one of my coworker is going to work for an engineering firm in south Florida that does all the design work in the US and all the production in China. Having known people who worked in multi-nationals in China, I can tell you that they won’t get the fees they expect for products produced. The plants generally run more material than they count and black market the rest. That’s simply how it’s done. No wonder China can underbid anybody else. Dishonesty is built into the system from the top to the bottom.
Given past Chinese runarounds, the Russkis need to ask for cash up front for all the aircraft to be placed in escrow at a foreign bank, to be doled out as they deliver aircraft to the PLAAF.