hello~
westerner tech guy in China here. they haven’t thrown me out yet, but then they haven’t grown up an equivalent of we do yet either. they haven’t tried to steal it or learn our secrets either.
nope for the last 3 or 4 years they’ve asked to license it to a local firm or better yet sell it outright to them. each time the price goes up and I suspect at some point it will become so irresistible that the founders will do it.
interestingly the sanctions closed us off from a lot of big institutes and companies who faced with losing the capability entirely just went ahead and acquired a bunch of Japanese stuff and jerry rigged it together. so that sucked.
because that’s it, if we don’t sell it to them someone else will and that’ll be the end of the party for everyone.
pretty sure this has played out in history before.
China was briefly an observer state to Warsaw Pact and then pretty quickly completely withdrew.
After sino-sovet split in the early 60s Sino-soviet relations did not really normalize until Gorbachev.