December 21,2008:
On December 11th, Russia and China signed an agreement, in which China
promised to stop stealing Russian military technology. It appears that the main
function of the new "military technical cooperation" agreement is to
stop China from exporting their copies of Russian equipment, and competing with
the Russian originals.
For the last
five years, the Russian government has been trying to deal with the growing
problem Russian defense manufacturers have had with China tolerating, or even
encouraging, Chinese manufacturers to steal Russian military technology. It's
not entire weapons systems the Chinese are stealing (like aircraft or ships),
but components. Radars and electronic systems in particular were being copied,
often using samples and technical data provided by Russian manufacturers, in
anticipation of a sale. What often happened was that there was no sale, and
then, a few years later, the Chinese came out with a copy, often a blatant
copy, of the Russian radar, missile or electronic warfare gear. The Chinese
have produced several copies of Russian artillery systems (like the 2S19M1
self-propelled 155mm gun or several multiple rocket launcher systems.) The
Chinese used their status as a major buyer of Russian aircraft and warships to
deflect demands that the copying cease. The Russians feared that the Chinese
would copy major systems, like aircraft or ships, and continue to ignore
Russian demands that their intellectual property rights be respected.
This is ironic for the Russians. During the
Cold War, much Western military and civilian technology was blatantly copied,
including microprocessors and computers themselves, by the Russians. Since the
end of the Cold War, Russia has been more careful about this, because the
collapse of the Soviet Union opened up the Russian defense labs, and their
large store of discoveries that had not been developed into anything useful
yet. American manufacturers were eager to get rights to this technology, once
they got a good look at it. The Western firms paid, and the billions of dollars
that entered the Russian economy that way forced the Russians to reciprocate,
and pay for Western technology they wanted.
The Chinese
have been forced by the West to cut back on some of their blatant theft of
foreign technology, except for Russian military stuff. The Russians were
getting fed up, and the government was under growing pressure to crack down on
the Chinese theft. Russia, flush with oil revenues and a booming economy, was
not as desperate for Chinese arms business as they used to be. So for the last
year, Chinese purchases of Russian military equipment have declined, as the
Chinese were increasingly offering stolen Russian technology for export sales. Finally,
Russia threatened legal action on an
international scale. Thus the new
agreement was a Chinese effort to avoid that sort of legal entanglement.