China’s Market Opening To Israeli Innovation

Forgive us for being less optimistic about this story than others, but China’s notorious reputation with regards to intellectual property theft isn’t reassuring. Official Chinese policy is driven by the desire to break the nation’s dependency on foreign goods and stealing other nation’s IP has become systemic in many industries. A recent NY Times article points out how this practice manifests itself in one area, copyrighted software:

No wonder China has become the world’s second-largest market for computer hardware sales — but is only the eighth-largest for software sales.

Israeli companies would be wise to proceed slowly with regards to China, and follow some wisdom from the famous Chinese philosopher Confucius, “The cautious seldom err.” Then again, if the Chinese are going to steal the intellectual property anyways, Israeli companies might as well charge them for it while they can.