主题：(转帖）预料之中的事情 -- 白玉老虎

* "China Will Keep Pursuing Digital Standards"

Wall Street Journal (04/23/04) P. B1; Chen, Kathy

Despite its decision to shelve a wireless-encryption standard in response to international pressure, China is going ahead with other initiatives to set standards for global technologies such as radio-frequency identification (RFID) and digital compression. Not only would this approach better position China to negotiate royalties or technology transfers, but would give Chinese industries an edge over competitors by claiming early ownership of nascent technologies. U.S. companies have been rattled by China's standardization efforts, which, if successful, would force them to customize products for the Chinese market. The Chinese government has established a working group that is holding discussions with 24 multinationals to shape a Chinese RFID standard. Meanwhile, China's video-compression technology, which was defined with assistance from Microsoft, Cisco, and other multinationals, is being promoted as superior to MPEG. Its licensing deal is also purported to be better: Licensors of the Chinese standard only have to deal with a single licensing body, whereas MPEG-4 licensors must hold separate fee negotiations with each individual patent holder. Anne Stevenson-Yang of the U.S. Information Technology Office reports that Chinese firms are naturally inclined to be leading standards-setters, but cautions that "you want to do it through inducement, not dictate, or you'll cut off your companies from export markets, international customers and collaboration in technology." China's wireless-encryption standardization effort may have been nixed, but policy makers note that the country is working on several compulsory security standards for routers and Internet-related hardware and software.