Posted on 04/04/2011 5:31:57 AM PDT by RS_Rider
Editor's note: This is the second of two parts: Yesterday's segment shared Motorola's and Apple's experiences doing business with China. Click here to read it.
Westinghouse Electric Co. is sharing important technical information about its next-generation nuclear reactors with China with the hope that it will create business -- and not a competitive monster.
China has 13 nuclear reactors, 25 under construction, and many more planned, said Westinghouse spokesman Vaughn Gilbert. China will spend an estimated $120 billion during the next nine years, a sum expected to more than double by 2030.
The Cranberry-based company says it's confident that in China, it has found a partnership that will flourish. Some experts are not so sure.
The problem is one that is endemic in China for Western multinationals: The cost of tapping into the world's largest market is surrendering technology that took generations and billions of dollars to accumulate.
"The Chinese are quite insistent that they be allowed to acquire technologies from companies participating in the Chinese market," said Fletcher Newton, executive vice president for strategic affairs for Uranium One, a Russian-controlled mining company with interests in Kazakhstan, Australia and the United States that hopes to benefit from selling uranium for the Chinese reactors.
Read more: Westinghouse surrendered next-generation nuclear plant specs - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/s_730553.html#ixzz1IYYvv5kr
(Excerpt) Read more at pittsburghlive.com ...
Fools and traitors!
LOL. What morons. Any company that does business in China should know the drill by now.
>> Westinghouse Electric Co. is sharing important technical information about its next-generation nuclear reactors with China with the hope that it will create business — and not a competitive monster.
Westinghouse upper management don’t have enough collective brains to pour pee out of a boot.
From China's perspective it really is not a bad way to do business. Keep in mind that China is not forcing anyone to do business in that country, all these companies choose it themselves. If you're the Chinese government, why would you want to make a foreign interest rich when you can make your own country rich instead?
So yes, it works very well for China, but not so much for the companies that just give away their valuable assets in such a manner. Since this process was never really a secret, these companies, and no one else, are responsible for any and all losses incurred from doing business in China.
It's nothing new. Where do you think the French got their nuclear technology? Or the Japanese?
I worked at PPG Industries in the 90’s.
PPG entered into a joint venture with china to build 6 glass plants. Once they were all built, china informed PPG that only a wholly chinese owned company could sell glass in china (the basis of the venture was to open up chinas market to PPG). PPG ended up handing over the plants along with all of the technology. Now china sells a finished windshield to us for less than US raw material costs.
Slow learners.
Bingo.
Westinghouse upper management is giving away their company's future in exchange for short-term profits, on the assumption that they will be retired with generous stock options by the time that competition from China becomes an issue.
From their prospective, any other choice is for suckers.
Also, much of the know-how they transfer is not proprietary Westinghouse intellectual property, but is instead the community property of American engineers -- the standard practices of how to successfully engineer a product.
Upper management only has to worry about the short term gain. When it all comes crashing down, they’ll already be cashed out and safely retired.
Makes perfect sense to me: if the US will give it to them, why wouldn’t you expect them to ask for it?
That is the real treasure being lost.
They are not fools. They know exactly what they are doing. They are not traitors. They don't considers themselves Americans to begin with, they are citizens of the world. America is just a geographic region to exploit.
The fools are the people that think voting for the traitorous Republicrat/Dumbocan Party is going to stop the transfer of American wealth and technology to Red China.
Not too smart over the long run. Too bad the US isn’t making use of the latest nuclear tech from Westinghouse instead of China.....
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
China spends $120 billion building nuclear power plants.
Idiotic US politicians squander $900 billion on useless and trivial research projects, bailing out foreign banks, and enriching Goldman Sachs bigwigs.
GE is even more scummy.
“Fools and traitors! “
Why? We’re afraid to build new reactors, even the latest designs, so Ifor one wouldn’t mind seeing China get the plans and the business.
It's what happened in software with H1Bs and off-shoring, and earlier with the off-shoring of the American shoe-making and garment industries: companies made short-term profits by exporting the common techniques and "tribal knowledge" that American workers had accumulated among ourselves, but which weren't really the proprietary trade secrets of any one company.
Over time, the people in the countries we exported the knowledge to, developed their own companies in competition with the American companies whose knowledge they now had. But by that point, the CEOs who ordered the knowledge transmission had moved on to other industries to wreck.
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