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Chapter 310 Saving the "Best" for Last

"Our president is very interested in your advanced chip industry, and he said he\'d like to initiate technological transfers to strengthen our ties, if possible," Minister Wang moved to the next topic. The oil negotiations were nothing more than an appetizer; the thing China was most looking forward to was breaking the technology blockade and entering the computer chip and semiconductor markets. And having come to a preliminary agreement on the oil trade gave him a lever to use to open the door for cooperation in chips and semiconductors.

"In what aspect, specifically, does he want to cooperate? To the best of my knowledge, our country\'s chip technology isn\'t that widely used." Gabriel was playing dumb using GAIA Technology not selling the chips to anyone as a shield. He knew that no matter what exorbitant prices buyers promised—and there were many buyers and truly exorbitant offers—the company absolutely would not sell under any circumstances. But he was curious as to what Minister Wang really wanted.

"We would like to open a jointly operated production line for some of the devices in your country in order to meet the demand of the billion-strong market in ours," Wang Yi said. He even specifically reinforced the size of the Chinese market as a psychological negotiation tactic.

"Although that offer is tempting, I\'d like to remind you that we don\'t control the company in question. But I\'ll deliver your suggestion and the benefits you offer to them and leave the decision in their hands," Gabriel replied with a straight face. But on the inside, he was wondering just how big a fool the man across the table thought he was.

Giving up their manufacturing lines to China was the same as stripping yourself and parading naked on a battlefield in front of your enemy\'s soldiers. Gabriel had been briefed by the intelligence department about the intellectual property theft that was rife in China; in a nutshell, if they could steal the technology and produce knockoffs of it, they had probably already stolen it long ago and the products were already on their store shelves. They would bribe technicians and factory workers of Chinese descent, hire professionals through LinkedIn and other headhunting sites for online work through shell corporations, and would even go as far as kidnapping researchers with covert operatives (spies) and even insert industrial espionage specialists into any and every company they thought made a useful product.

That said, they were far from unique in that tendency. Most countries did exactly the same things, but China had always had friction with outsiders so it became a bludgeon they used to beat their reputation with.

"Then please deliver our offer to them and I\'ll wish them happy cooperation in advance," Minister Wang said. He knew pushing any further would only have the exact opposite effect.

...

"We\'ve already lost more than half of our market share during the past year! What\'re you planning on doing to stop this downward spiral?" Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, was in a meeting of the board of directors, silently listening to them vent their irritation on him.

After asking that, they remained silent and waited for an answer from the CEO, who started answering the question as it was one that was to be expected based on the company\'s recent performance.

"Although the loss in market share can be attributed to a strong competitor entering the market, that isn\'t the entirety of the reason why our stocks aren\'t recovering. That\'s mostly because someone leveraged a short position on our shares about a month before GAIA Tech even hinted at their next release being in our space. It\'s suspicious in and of itself, and it means whoever took that position is somehow connected to GAIA Tech and knew the impact their entry into the mobile market would have on us. But you also have to remember that we aren\'t the only ones caught off guard by that... our former competitors were as well." He fell silent and waited for the next question, which really did come moments after he finished speaking.

"You had more than a year since their release, yet you\'re still using it as the reason for your failure? Haven\'t you had enough time to learn from their product and even patent a thing or two, since they haven\'t been bothered to do so themselves? Also, you\'re saying that our competitors are facing similar troubles. But as far as I know, LG already stabilized their shares and even show signs of recovery!"

"GAIA is unique in that they haven\'t even bothered with patents for most of their tech, yet we can\'t even figure it out when it\'s handed to us. If we were to try that, the knockoffs would be on store shelves within the week. Besides, the reason LG managed to stabilize is that they manufacture more things than we do. We\'re limited to the mobile market, phones and laptops, but LG has their fingers in everything from mobile phones to home appliances," Tim answered, prepared as usual.

Another question was immediately thrown at him. "So what are you going to do?"

"I\'ve devised three different plans, depending on how the situation unfolds. First, we can buy chips from them and continue competing with them in the high end market, like we do with Samsung\'s screens.

"Second, we can lower the price of our devices to the mid range. Although our profit margins will drop, it\'ll still be a profitable business since we\'ll make up the shortfall in volume. It will, however, cost us our premium prestige and brand recognition will be diluted. But that isn\'t really important since we\'ve been losing that since they released Zeus One and the Olympus models." There was a commotion in the room and he waited until it had almost completely died down before continuing.

"Third," he said, silencing the room, "we could spend a few billion dollars lobbying and have the government implement a ban of either their software or hardware. Since they aren\'t an American company, we can claim it\'s a national security risk and force them to make their programs and processes public. Otherwise, they can just be banned from operating in the US at all. And it won\'t be just us—we could cooperate with companies like Facebook, Samsung, Twitter, and all the other tech companies that were harmed by GAIA\'s products. We\'d form a coalition of benefits to force GAIA to submit or be kicked out.

"As we know, America leads the world in tech research and hardware. One mere GAIA isn\'t enough to shake that foundation," he finished. He had saved his best plan for last.