"China's copying of foreign weapons systems and subsystems" stuff

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Pioneer

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Ok gents, this has been the bed bug of my mind for a long long time.
Hats off to the PRC, for their tremendous economic turnaround over the past couple of decades. Unfortunately for the Chinese people, the rest of the world was happy to use and abuse the Chinese people and their resources for their own benefit and profit.
But as much as I salute the coming of the PRC into its own, I am greatly concerned as to the use and abuse that the PRC’s political and military are willing and able to extract on other nations and their intellectual property. This willingness of the PRC to copy and clone technology is not helping tensions that are growing in the world.
There can be no doubt that much of the ability of the PRC and PLA to copy and clone foreign military (and civilian) technology/weapons systems derives from the initial greed and ignorance of many foreign governments and corporations, in their strive to capitalise and cash in on the PRC’s boom economy – i.e. United States, Israel, South Africa, Russia and France arms industries. Most of these State sponsored arms/technology endorsements have taken a while to come to their sensors that they are being used and abused, so as to build and quench the insatiable appetite of the PRC and PRC to modernise (and in some cases surpass) its military and political ambitions. Most of these State supported arms deals eventually come around to releasing, when it is too late that the quick money and political benefits are far outweighed by the intellectual property and export competitiveness they stand to lose or have lost. In fact the PRC has become so confident in this play, that they have for a long time denoted where and when they chose when to ouster the foreign corporation, once they are confident they have exceeded their worth (Israel and France are good examples of this!)
I would like to request Forum members to detail weapons/ weapons platforms / technology that they think that the PRC/PLA have copied or cloned.

Please note to my fellow Chinese Forum member’s, that this thread is not intended or my want to be seen as an anti-PRC slant or bashing session! In accordance to this, I ask my fellow forum member’s to reframe from using and abusing this thread as such!
For it is my belief and conviction that this copying and cloning is taking place is a deliberate directive of the PRC/PLA, as not much happens without eithers ok.
I would also like to factually point out that the PRC/PLA is not the first nation/military to conduct a deliberate campaign of copying/cloning of weapons/weapons systems. But it is my belief that the PRC/PLA’s is perhaps one of the best orchestrated and sadly one of the best supported by foreign corporations in history!

I will begin my contribution to this thread with the following, I recently found on the web, and what finally made me post such a thread on this Forum

Regards
Pioneer

China has followed in acquiring military technologies from many sources. When seeking a new technology, China contacts a foreign manufacturer and requests substantial technical information about its product, supposedly with the intent to buy. Instead, Chinese engineers study the materials and imitate the relevant concepts and designs.’ According to a representative from the South African Denel Group, the PL-ASR is almost a replica of its A-Darter AAM. The Denel representative told the author during an interview in Cape Town that the Chinese had contacted the company in 2001 to explore the possibility of importing fifth-generation A-Darter infrared-guided AAMs, which included a TVC propulsion system and pilot helmet-mounted displays.
In the end, Denel did not sell the technologies to China, which it regards as its key competitor in selling air-to-air missiles on the African market. Company engineers were therefore surprised to find that the Chinese PL-ASR is nearly identical to the A-Darter in exterior structure, tail engine and even the diameter of the missile body.
The company strongly suspects that China reverse-engineered its A-Darter AAM after acquiring its technological materials.
After being given a focused inspection of the Denel Rooivalk combat helicopter’s subsystems, China wanted to purchase one helicopter from Denel, but the South African company considered the purchase of a single aircraft the equivalent of giving away its technologies. As a result, Denel decided not to sell China the helicopter and the cooperation came to an end.Since 2007, Norinco has attempted to contact the Denel Group again, saying that it wants to import the company’s G5 155-mm howitzer ammunition handling system. But Denel is not eager to enter into an agreement with China on this project.
 
Show me a country that could copy and clone technology it needs but doesn't, and I show you a country that would never be more than a third tier also-ran.
 
chuck4 said:
Show me a country that could copy and clone technology it needs but doesn't, and I show you a country that would never be more than a third tier also-ran.
Wise words my friend!As I stated in the above - The PRC/PLA is not alone or unique in copy or cloning. But the seeming near open proliferation on behalf of the PRC/PLA appears to be so obvious. RegardsPioneer
 
Pioneer said:
Please note to my fellow Chinese Forum member’s, that this thread is not intended or my want to be seen as an anti-PRC slant or bashing session!


Possile responses:
1) Peter Griffin: Heeeheeheee. Slant.
2) Knee-jerk leftist: Racist!
 
Orionblamblam said:
Pioneer said:
Please note to my fellow Chinese Forum member’s, that this thread is not intended or my want to be seen as an anti-PRC slant or bashing session!


Possile responses:
1) Peter Griffin: Heeeheeheee. Slant.
2) Knee-jerk leftist: Racist!
Not a great start!My friend, I only hope it does not degenerate into this!!I simply wish to discuss and see compassions of these weapon systems!! RegardsPioneer
 
Things that come to mind:
  • F-22 canopy on J-20.
  • LCAC
  • RAM (CIWS missile)
  • Goalkeeper
  • Mk41 VLS
  • Pegasus (not that they've ever come close to flying one.)
  • Pershing II RV
  • Su-27
  • Python 3
  • Aspide
  • HUMVEE
  • S-300
  • Diverterless inlet
  • Lavi
Those are just off the top of my head. I'm sure I could think of a lot more.
 
Convicted spy Dongfan “Greg” Chung supposedly had "225,000 pages of documents on Boeing-developed aerospace and defense technologies" in his house.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/35300466/ns/us_news-security/t/chinese-born-engineer-gets-years-spying/#.UVfxpBzvh8F
 
There is also the French Super Frelon helicopter. The PRC simply bought a bunch of spare parts legitimately from Aérospatiale, then copied the whole thing, including the Sikorsky-designed main rotor with its self-folding blades.
 
Eh?


I thought they bought 16 Super Frelons and paid for a license.
 
Without wanting to make this an emotive topic ::) I couldn't help but think about how the US put men on the moon (sorry Scott..)


It wasn't exactly copying, but it wasn't exactly home-grown ingenuity was it?


Adopt, adapt and overcome, as they say elsewhere. Alternative version - "copy with pride"
 
Missile guidance technologies and the W88 warhead
 
I can't say I blame them, given they entered the 90s with an aerospace and defence industrial base that in large parts was still stuck in the 50s (minus a brief insertion of western tech in the 80s). A combination of industrial espionage and license breaking seems rather logical. The Chinese approach also seems to have been much more productive than the legitimate independent research and technology transfer techniques.
 
Gridlock said:
Without wanting to make this an emotive topic ::) I couldn't help but think about how the US put men on the moon (sorry Scott..)


It wasn't exactly copying, but it wasn't exactly home-grown ingenuity was it?


Adopt, adapt and overcome, as they say elsewhere. Alternative version - "copy with pride"

Yeah, I mean a Saturn V / Apollo is damn near a carbon copy of a V-2. ::)
 
sferrin said:
Gridlock said:
Without wanting to make this an emotive topic ::) I couldn't help but think about how the US put men on the moon (sorry Scott..)


It wasn't exactly copying, but it wasn't exactly home-grown ingenuity was it?


Adopt, adapt and overcome, as they say elsewhere. Alternative version - "copy with pride"

Yeah, I mean a Saturn V / Apollo is damn near a carbon copy of a V-2. ::)

Yeah, we used compulsory conscription of other people's engineers in addition to copying and cloning of other people's technology, which makes it right.
They uses only the copying and cloning of other people technologies, which makes it wrong.
 
chuck4 said:
sferrin said:
Gridlock said:
Without wanting to make this an emotive topic ::) I couldn't help but think about how the US put men on the moon (sorry Scott..)


It wasn't exactly copying, but it wasn't exactly home-grown ingenuity was it?


Adopt, adapt and overcome, as they say elsewhere. Alternative version - "copy with pride"

Yeah, I mean a Saturn V / Apollo is damn near a carbon copy of a V-2. ::)

Yeah, we used compulsory conscription of other people's engineers in addition to copying and cloning of other people's technology, which makes it right.
They uses only the copying and cloning of other people technologies, which makes it wrong.

Yeah, I heard they had someone with a whip standing behind Von Braun at all times. ::) And no, a Saturn V is not a copy of a V-2 anymore than a 747 is a copy of the Wright Brothers flyer.
 
chuck4 said:
Yeah, we used compulsory conscription of other people's engineers ...

Who's this "we?"

As for cloning other people's tech: How many V-2 rocket-clones did the US make? Please compare and contrast US V-2-copying with Soviet V-2-copying, along with the utilization of German engineers in postwar US vs postwar USSR.
 
Here's a fun one: A Soviet copy of the B-29, the Tu-4, re-engined with Soviet turboprops and then given to China, who used it as a drone carrier, carrying Chinese copies of the Ryan Firebee, the WZ-5 UAV, which is powered by a Chinese WP-11 turbojet, a copy of the J85.
 

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Yes - the B-29 and the P-80 were certainly both excellent planes for the time (the P-80 wasn't copied though).

If you want to look at deeper history - look at the first editions of Encyclopedia Americana (copies of Encyclopedia Brittanica made without permission). There is such a rich history of this sort of thing.
 
Gridlock said:
It wasn't exactly copying, but it wasn't exactly home-grown ingenuity was it?

Actually, I don't see how Apollo/Saturn *weren't* "home-grown ingenuity." Yes, there were some Germans in important positions, but the actual design, construction and testing was done by an *army* of Americans. And by the time Apollo 11 landed on the moon, many of the Germans were German no longer, but US citizens. (von Braun, Ernst Stuhlinger and others became US citizens in 1955)

Just the development of the F-1 engine by Rocketdyne far exceeded the relatively trivial input of a few foreign scientists a decade and a half after their emigration out of Germany.
 
Orionblamblam said:
chuck4 said:
Yeah, we used compulsory conscription of other people's engineers ...

Who's this "we?"

As for cloning other people's tech: How many V-2 rocket-clones did the US make? Please compare and contrast US V-2-copying with Soviet V-2-copying, along with the utilization of German engineers in postwar US vs postwar USSR.

"We" is the US. What difference does it make to the legitamcy of the practice if the Soviets did pretty much the same things we've done, only to different degree based on their different needs? If we pretend an extent of this process suitable to serve our particular need is legitimate, than it is utterly pathetically self-serving to claim a different extent of the same process to suite their particular need is blame-worthy.

This promise of this thread boils down to "do it for us is Okay, do it onto us is not".
 
chuck4 said:
Orionblamblam said:
chuck4 said:
Yeah, we used compulsory conscription of other people's engineers ...

Who's this "we?"

As for cloning other people's tech: How many V-2 rocket-clones did the US make? Please compare and contrast US V-2-copying with Soviet V-2-copying, along with the utilization of German engineers in postwar US vs postwar USSR.

"We" is the US. What difference does it make to the legitamcy of the practice if the Soviets did pretty much the same things we've done, only to different degree based on their different needs? If we pretend an extent of this process suitable to serve our particular need is legitimate, than it is utterly pathetically self-serving to claim a different extent of the same process to suite their particular need is blame-worthy.

This promise of this thread boils down to "do it for us is Okay, do it onto us is not".

Show me the German Saturn V / Apollo we copied.
 
chuck4 said:
Orionblamblam said:
chuck4 said:
Yeah, we used compulsory conscription of other people's engineers ...

Who's this "we?"

As for cloning other people's tech: How many V-2 rocket-clones did the US make? Please compare and contrast US V-2-copying with Soviet V-2-copying, along with the utilization of German engineers in postwar US vs postwar USSR.

"We" is the US.

And when did *we* compulsorily conscript foreign engineers to work for us? It clearly wasn't after WWII, as those engineers were *recruited,*not impressed into service.

What difference does it make to the legitamcy of the practice if the Soviets did pretty much the same things we've done, only to different degree based on their different needs?

Once again... what the US and the USSR did were *very* different. The Soviets directly copied the V-2 and the B-29, and put them into service. Germans were *actually* forced to work for the Soviets (to the point Stalin explicityl ordered the kidnapping of the likesof Eugen Sanger).

This promise of this thread boils down to "do it for us is Okay, do it onto us is not".

Codswollop. Until such time as you can point out the military systems that "we" directly copied and put into service, you have no arguement.

The basic premise of *your* argument boils down to "If it was ok for the US to employ some Germans, it's ok for the Chinese to pirate planes and missiles and books and video games and Gucci bags and sneakers and computers and software."
 
What about the design of the M1903? Pretty much ripped straight from Mauser design.
 
I thought the Allied plundering of German technological knowledge, as well as the wholesale ignoring of German private company patents has been well established, even though some here seem to be strangely trying to say it didn't happen.

Bizarre.

On the thread topic, no matter how unpalatable China's actions are, it's a smart policy from them, seeing as the repercussions seem to be few up to this point.

Why reinvent the wheel?

Intellectual property is a relatively new concept (I'm talking in relation over the thousands of years of human history and development).
Companies all over the world, and particularly military companies, do copy each other all the time.

I use the word copy very loosely. More like inspired.
Using the J-20 canopy as an example: Unless someone has crawled over it's canopy with a micrometer or digital measuring device, no one can say for certain whether it is a carbon copy, or was very closely inspired by the F-22's canopy, via espionage. If it has just one or 2 parameters that are changed, or different, well then...........

I do recall the time China having the cheek to ask for purchasing a single Rooivalk helicopter though. ;D

And with that, I'm out of the thread.
Banana skin of a topic, this one.
 
IMHO there has never been nor may there ever be a nation, China, that has been dedicated to the wholesale theft of the worlds technology combined with what for all practically purposes global cyber-warfare ALL state sanctioned.
 
kaiserbill said:
I thought the Allied plundering of German technological knowledge, as well as the wholesale ignoring of German private company patents has been well established,


No. Germany started a war then *surrendered.* As a consequence, they lost control of their stuff. It's quite unlike peacetime piracy; more akin to the legal system taking your stuff after you've been tried and imprisoned for, say, fraud.
 
kaiserbill said:
Unless someone has crawled over it's canopy with a micrometer or digital measuring device, no one can say for certain whether it is a carbon copy, or was very closely inspired by the F-22's canopy, via espionage. If it has just one or 2 parameters that are changed, or different, well then

Yeah, the writing on it is in Chinese instead of English so I guess it's not a "carbon copy". ::)
 
Orionblamblam,Actually, the WP-11 is a copy of the J69 turbojet engine, not the J85. The J69 was the primary engine used by most BQM-34 variants, while the J85 only powered a few. The exact variant of the BQM-34 that was captured by China was the AQM-34N, which was powered by the J69 engine.
 
PaulMM (Overscan) said:
Eh?


I thought they bought 16 Super Frelons and paid for a license.


13 I think, but yes they did pay for them and a license. This was the first major French-Chinese arms sale in the 1980s, and was followed by several more legitimate deals. China didn't become heavily interested in outright stealing western arms designs until after the 1989 embargo which cut short all kinds of deals. Though one might also observe that in the 1980s China would have been largely incapable of replicating the designs without direct foreign support anyway.
 
Orionblamblam said:
Gridlock said:
It wasn't exactly copying, but it wasn't exactly home-grown ingenuity was it?

Actually, I don't see how Apollo/Saturn *weren't* "home-grown ingenuity." Yes, there were some Germans in important positions, but the actual design, construction and testing was done by an *army* of Americans. And by the time Apollo 11 landed on the moon, many of the Germans were German no longer, but US citizens. (von Braun, Ernst Stuhlinger and others became US citizens in 1955)

Isn't that how copying tends to work? A nation copies/steals technology from another, builds a few copies of the original, and then starts its own developments based on the knowledge gained. Throw enough money at it, and you can go from V-2 to Apollo in 15 years. That doesn't mean the original contribution wasn't there.
If I read the Wikipedia article correctly, Von Braun and his team were basically prisoners up to ~1950.
 
Orionblamblam said:
kaiserbill said:
I thought the Allied plundering of German technological knowledge, as well as the wholesale ignoring of German private company patents has been well established,


No. Germany started a war then *surrendered.* As a consequence, they lost control of their stuff. It's quite unlike peacetime piracy; more akin to the legal system taking your stuff after you've been tried and imprisoned for, say, fraud.
I understand that you will feel that way, as a citizen of a beneficiary nation.
The wholesale plundering of private company patents is not so glibly explained away.
 
sferrin said:
kaiserbill said:
Unless someone has crawled over it's canopy with a micrometer or digital measuring device, no one can say for certain whether it is a carbon copy, or was very closely inspired by the F-22's canopy, via espionage. If it has just one or 2 parameters that are changed, or different, well then

Yeah, the writing on it is in Chinese instead of English so I guess it's not a "carbon copy". ::)

I see your sarcasm on the matter illustrates nicely that you actually can't coherently refute my point.
 
bobbymike said:
IMHO there has never been nor may there ever be a nation, China, that has been dedicated to the wholesale theft of the worlds technology combined with what for all practically purposes global cyber-warfare ALL state sanctioned.

The history of SIGINT, including Rhyolite/Aquacade, may, in time, prove otherwise. ;)
Letting the genie out the lamp, and then complaining when others do the same, albeit with different methodologies and goals, is....well....

You know.
 
kaiserbill said:
Orionblamblam said:
kaiserbill said:
I thought the Allied plundering of German technological knowledge, as well as the wholesale ignoring of German private company patents has been well established,


No. Germany started a war then *surrendered.* As a consequence, they lost control of their stuff. It's quite unlike peacetime piracy; more akin to the legal system taking your stuff after you've been tried and imprisoned for, say, fraud.
I understand that you will feel that way, as a citizen of a beneficiary nation.
The wholesale plundering of private company patents is not so glibly explained away.


The seizing of war-related materials e.g. physical jet plane prototypes, rockets, etc, probably comes legal definitions under "war booty". There was also a widespread feeling that the wider appropriation of materials was a form of restitution for the crippling cost of winning the war on Allied nations.
 
What worry me most, is not china copycat what they get in there hands.
They improve it also !
I heard they stolen parts of MX-ICBM in order to copy it, but put there version DF-41 on a Mobile Launcher...
 
PaulMM (Overscan) said:
kaiserbill said:
Orionblamblam said:
kaiserbill said:
I thought the Allied plundering of German technological knowledge, as well as the wholesale ignoring of German private company patents has been well established,


No. Germany started a war then *surrendered.* As a consequence, they lost control of their stuff. It's quite unlike peacetime piracy; more akin to the legal system taking your stuff after you've been tried and imprisoned for, say, fraud.
I understand that you will feel that way, as a citizen of a beneficiary nation.
The wholesale plundering of private company patents is not so glibly explained away.


The seizing of war-related materials e.g. physical jet plane prototypes, rockets, etc, probably comes legal definitions under "war booty". There was also a widespread feeling that the wider appropriation of materials was a form of restitution for the crippling cost of winning the war on Allied nations.

Many chinese do indeed feel they are entitled to the western technologies they could steal as restitutions for what they perceive to be western oppressions since the opium war. Their view, not valid but firmly held, is china would have developed or acquired everything legitimately by now if it weren't for the backward state of the country, which they blame on unfair oppression by the west between 1840 and 1979.

They also feel the ongoing western arms embargo, especially by the US, as evidence of hostile intent requiring the Chinese to do what is necessary to acquire the military capability and technology to counter.
 
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