[jlangenauer]

This is not exactly the fault of VW/Renault etc. China has quite explicitly encouraged technology transfer as an important strategic imperative for their local firms, so if these companies wanted to play in the (obviously growing) Chinese market, technology transfer was the price to be paid.

(Another example of this is the high-speed trains in China - the first generation was built by JVs with Siemens/Hitachi/etc with an explicit policy of technology transfer, but the newest trains in China are now local, built on top of the technology that has been acquired.)

[alephnerd]

And they're doing the same in India.

There's a reason I mentioned Renault and Dassault - to show that it's not just a China thing.

Every country pushes for JVs, but it's up to the individual companies themselves to defend their IP, or at least integrate the host country's talent base with the home country's innovation system so that it's mutually beneficial (eg. What Japanese companies did in Korea in the 1970s-80s).

American companies do that (eg. L1/2 transfers and O-1 visas) but European and Japanese companies don't as often.

[insane_dreamer]

US companies haven't had any more success in protecting their IP in China and avoiding "tech transfer" than European companies; it's endemic to operating in China ("somehow" your tech leaks from your JV to your Chinese competitors, who in some cases may even be owned by the same group of people through a web of shell companies). (The solar panel industry is a good example of this.)