SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
CBC News has found Huawei's financial ties to Canadian universities total more than $56 million. But there are no federal guidelines around how these investments should be managed and disclosed, and that raises questions about who will own the findings of the research and the resulting patents.
[...] "Frankly, the government of Canada has fallen down catastrophically," says Christopher Parsons, a senior research associate at the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, which studies the way information is used, and misused, across technologies. "No one knows exactly what they should be doing."
Parsons, who is also the managing director of the Telecom Transparency Project, says the government's failure to set out policy guidelines for private sector funding has made it difficult for universities, which rely on that funding to stay at the forefront of wireless research and, in turn, attract top students.
Huawei says it is one of the biggest funders of academic research in Canada. Google, Microsoft, Rogers and Bell are among the others but declined to provide CBC News with any figures. Like Huawei, they are not required to disclose funding details.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/huawei-academic-funding-in-canada-1.5372310
Canadian universities pwned by big corp: does anyone else remember when universities and governments did research without the financial 'help' of corporations?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 02 2019, @02:35AM (2 children)
Because they were the enemy of _the_ enemy. However their basic government model is at odds with the democratic world, so in that sense they are an enemy. They don't adhere to a lot of the basic human rights, and in some instances violate them to the extreme.
They're only becoming relevant because they are now in a much more economic stable ground and is also starting on expansion strategies, in various forms, through out south east asia. Their road and belt policy, i.e. one belt one road, is just one of that form.
If you look at the timelines of how this came about it is almost too perfect to be accidental. They were an economically/socially poor country, by western standards, even though they are resource rich, coming out of WW2 and under the communist regime. After Mao, they slowly open up and with the help of the western world built out their economic empire to only be second to none and still improving. Now with that foundation, the rallying of President Xi to reign in that build up of wealth and economic presence into more central government control is the perfect move to lead into their expansion plans.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 02 2019, @05:40AM (1 child)
I think this is missing some key points. The basic Chinese governmental model is democratic. Villages elect representatives. These representatives generally stand for about 2,000 people and have quite substantial federal granted power. These representatives then elect other representatives than go on to elect e.g. the president. Interestingly enough this model tends to be quite stable. I think this is because each representative is able to do a much better and appropriate job. The president can focus on big picture and long-term goals, without worrying about demagoguery to keep himself in office. And the low level representatives actually have some clue what can help their people when they're so localized. In the US each of our federal representatives in the House now stands for more than 700,000 people. That's absurd. Yet if we did have some strongly representative system, we'd probably end up going the exact path as China since many thousands of representatives would just become complete chaos.
The reason we're turning against China is because we're losing power. Our power is fundamentally derived from our economy. Even things like our military are just a function of our economy. The things you're seeing today such as countries and corporations starting to turn towards China all come down to the exact same thing - economy. This [wikipedia.org] is a table of effective economic size. China's economy is already 30% larger and rapidly growing. For instance this year they saw slower than expected growth (due to the trade wars) of only 6%. We saw faster than expected growth of 2%. That's a 40% relative decline by decade, more like 50% due to compounding gains. Even India is now expected to surpass the United States sometime near a decade from now.
And at the same time this is happening our elections are becoming ever more polarized, destructive, and full of demagoguery. Politicians promising things they can't deliver, promising things that they can deliver but that they undoubtedly know will harm the country, so forth and so on. It's a shit show. Our nation is strong enough, and people content enough, that I think any suggestions of collapse are greatly exaggerated. But I do think we've already entered into a transition point where our global dominance will just gradually decline. Obviously those in power see this happening and are doing all they can to reverse it. You can't effectively change our system, so they're working to undermine China's. Expect to see the exact same thing applied to India over the coming years since I think India will probably lean more towards China than the west. However, I don't think our dominance ending is really a bad thing at all. I think a multi-polar world is probably the way to go. If everybody thinks the same way, how do you know if you're wrong? When you have many different systems, people can see which system is working better and which system is working worse. And as all of the world economically develops, people themselves can even vote with their feet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 02 2019, @06:08AM
But in China despite them having elections and representatives there's only One Party. In the Great USA there are Two Parties (the others aren't allowed to count[1]). That's 100% better!
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/how-republicans-democrats-prevent-independent-candidates-getting-ballot-ncna866466 [nbcnews.com]
https://newrepublic.com/article/146884/america-stuck-two-parties [newrepublic.com]