YOUR article 'US, China fire opening shots' (Sunday Morning Post, February 5) shows how serious an issue piracy is. The Americans are right to seek to stamp it out. But are they hurting themselves more than China? We in Hong Kong have been through it before. In the early 1980s we copied Apple computers and their software, then it was the turn of IBM. Gradually we made piracy more difficult and now the information industry here is fairly legitimate. But what happened in the meantime? Huge numbers of our people became computer literate on the cheap, pirated material. They are now hooked. So there is an extensive market that might not otherwise exist.
Relate this to China. Not only is the computer market growing unprecedentedly, the programming is almost entirely in English - or American. The US has had a significant impact on education in China through its information culture. Americans have laid the foundations of a massive market, not just for computers but for all their products. However, there is still a very long way to go. The Chinese have nowhere near the enthusiasm we in Hong Kong had when we cracked down on piracy.
Someone has decided this is the time to cool Chinese enthusiasm. Software is to be denied those who cannot pay. The spokesmen argue that billions of dollars is being lost through piracy. However, I suspect the losses are grossly overestimated.
If the piracy suddenly stopped, the indigenous software industry would receive a tremendous boost. Programming in Chinese would become much more viable and sought after. Before long, the market for US software would be hopelessly undermined. The Americans would have lost the war whose opening shots we are now witnessing.
Indeed China, with a population four times that of the US, may have the resources to ensure that next century the best, most powerful programmes are in Chinese, leaving the Americans to become the pirates.
The pragmatic way for the US to combat piracy would be to offer its current range of software at the same price, or less, as the pirated material, but with better support and manuals - in Chinese. Sensibly and scientifically done, it could put the pirates out of business and get the American information culture so ingrained with Chinese management that they could never turn back.
