Cooperating With China In Space
Farside Politics: The West Eyes Moon Cooperation with China, Scientific American
“The final law Wolf put in place–the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2015, which remains in effect today–states no funds may be spent by NASA to “develop, design, plan, promulgate, implement or execute a bilateral policy, program, order or contract of any kind to participate, collaborate or coordinate bilaterally in any way with China or any Chinese-owned company unless such activities are specifically authorized by law after the date of enactment of this act.” NASA is able to formally collaborate with China as long as it notifies Congress in advance and gets congressional approval of the specific interaction.”
That seems paranoid. I can understand reservations about technology-sharing, but certainly we could collaborate with them on some joint crewed space projects (I’d love to have them involved in a joint-Moon-Base effort).
I would as well.
Yes, I know, they are IP thieves. And I know that many think the progressive notion of engagement is seen in some quarters as naive. Maybe it is. I know this: if nothing changes everything stays the same.
I would characterize it as xenophobic rather than paranoid. Does anyone really think Apple, HP, Samsung, Tesla, Boeing and even Walmart, all expanding in China, are somehow unaware that Chinese firms might try to duplicate their capabilities? America’s leading technology companies are so naive that it took Frank Wolf to save them from being robbed of their secrets? Musk put it best. Looking out at the audience of people he is hiring to manufacture his masterpiece in China, he said: “The next president of Tesla may be one of you.”
There’s no question American firms are naive, some of them are already pulling back, for example Apple already sold iCloud in China to a Chinese firm, probably because its servers are bugged by Chinese intelligence.
Musk built the factory in China because the Chinese government forced him to do this by levying a high import tax, he’s not doing this because he likes it, he’s doing this because he had to. And if you want to use Musk as example, please note SpaceX is not at all interested in international cooperation, let alone with China. In fact he said the China will be the main competitors to SpaceX.
Why should NASA cooperating with China when US commercial companies already have more launch capability than China? The US government should support its own commercial companies, instead of sending more money to the Chinese.
“Apple already sold iCloud in China to a Chinese firm”
Not exactly correct. Apple owns iCloud. They were required to store the data in China. This is a typical, and despicable, move by the Chinese, unavoidable by Apple. In any case, data storage as close as possible to the users makes sense.
The data remains encrypted, end to end.
The question is if you trust the encryption. Also remember what is in the cloud is only as safe as your password is.
That’s a little misleading. The encryption Apple uses has nothing to do with your password or other local credentials. Apple has said time and again that they cannot see your data and do not want to see your data.
“Trust”, in case it does not come easily to some, can be easily tested by imagining the effect on Apple should it ever become true that they could see the data all the while. Nobody is that dumb. Certainly not Tim Cook.
You never trust anything if China is involved. Although that may be true in the U.S. I would not be surprise if China forced them into a different standard. Remember, a nation that thinks nothing of placing a million ethnic minorities in “reeducation” camps, and of making the head of Interpol disappear, is capable of anything.
https://www.bbc.com/news/wo…
Turkey demands China close camps after reports of musician’s death
10 February 2019
I do not dispute the morality of Chinese policy but that does not seem to be acting as much of a deterrent to US investment in what is arguably the world’s largest market. Tesla was able to convince the Chinese government that it would not accept a Chinese partner, and I suspect other major investors are getting the same deal.
They “outsourced” Chinese iCloud operations to a Chinese firm, same difference.
Encryption doesn’t matter because the keys are stored in China too: https://www.theverge.com/20…
That is why it is time for the U.S. to push for true free trade by adopting the policy of mirror tarffs. If you put a 25% tariff on automobile imports, like China, we will replace our 2.5% tariff with one at the same level as yours. If you drop yours to zero, then we will as well.
Do they still use most favored state?
That’s essentially what happened. The Trump Administration imposed tariffs on a wide range of Chinese exports and China, as you would expect, responded by imposing tariffs on US exports. If we want free trade we should have been promoting agreements that would lower barriers on both sides.
No, its the opposite. Those high tariffs China had on manufactured goods existed first forcing foreign firms to manufacture there. The new tariffs are mostly on raw materials that China has been buying, and it is hurting them by forcing the to compete with other nations for a smaller supply base. Since they already had high tariffs on U.S. vehicles raising them more didn’t have that much additional impact. You really need to take a look at the history of Chinese tariffs. For example that high tariff of 25% on automobiles has been there since 2006.
https://realmoney.thestreet…
“China was admitted to the World Trade Organization in December, 2001 and in 2006 set a tariff of 25% on imported autos.”
And its wasn’t just President Trump. President Obama complained about how high Chinese tariffs on U.S. goods were as well. A blast from the past, from 2012.
https://www.forbes.com/site…
Jul 12, 2012, 04:27pm
Tear Down This Wall — the Chinese Tariff Wall
Biazhu Chen
“The Obama Administration recently took up the anti-dumping duties imposed by China on imported American-made cars and trucks with the World Trade Organization (WTO), as a violation of the WTO rules.”
It was only after President Trump was elected that the media pushed this as a “right wing” issue. Same as the border wall that was started under the Clinton Administration…
Really you need to look beyond the media sound bites and learn the history of some of these political issues. It is out there if you look.
Like many right-wing notions, that’s an overly-simplistic reaction to a very nuanced situation.
Since when is a basic economic principle “right wing” That statement is based entirely on free trade theory which was developed by David Ricardo. In his example tariffs either don’t exist or are identical. High tariffs, like China has, distort international trade.
Two of the very first commercial satellites SpaceX launched from KSC were for a Chinese company, an actual sale of American services to China, bringing Chinese money to the US. Show me such a sale by ULA. The barriers NASA imposed on access to thier payloads by SpaceX’s Chinese commercial customers made further sales difficult to impossible, at least until SpaceX has a non-NASA launch site. Tariffs on US auto exports to China, raising the price of Teslas, were imposed following the US imposition of tariffs on a wide range of Chinese exports.
No, they were not raised, the tariffs on automobile imports to China have always been 25%, which forces foreign firms to build plants there. That is why we are now raising tariffs on Chinese goods, to open up that market to true free trade.
I don’t know what you’re talking about with regard to SpaceX’s Chinese launches, this has nothing to do with NASA. SpaceX’s SLC-40 site is inside CCAFS, it belongs to the AirForce, not NASA. The law preventing NASA spending funds on cooperation with China has no impact on SpaceX’s commercial launches whatsoever.
I certainly wish I could spout “the right” response to our problems with China as far as space cooperation goes, but I can’t. But we can be firm without being hostile. Anyhow, I’m pretty sure “The Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2015”, is not it.