Author: Carl Roper
ISBN No: 9781439899380
Review date: 12/06/2026
No of pages: 320
Publisher: CRC Press
Publisher URL:
http://www.crcpress.com
Year of publication: 09/12/2013
Brief:
Trade Secret Theft, Industrial Espionage, and the China Threat Carl Roper
Trade Secret Theft, Industrial Espionage, and the China Threat; by Carl Roper. Published by CRC Press.
China is the ‘red dragon of industrial espionage’ warns an American author. He describes China variously as ‘a sleeping giant’ or ‘a dangerous country with its sharpened claws reaching out across the world, both to sell their products and to obtain our secrets that allow them to make those products and more products for a fraction of the investment cost.’ He details how China seeks to collect data on western products from medicines to tyres to nuclear missiles. Like many books by North Americans, this (understandably) is centred on America; more than many, this is as relevant to UK readers because the espionage threat from China, as the UK security services have said, is the same for the UK as US or indeed any economy with intellectual property worth stealing (and perhaps even Americans do espionage too, as Wikileaks, Edward Snowden and all have told?!). How aggressive is Chinese espionage? And is it on the rise? How to spot it, and what to do about it? You may want a general work on espionage to cover your bases, but if your market is China, this may be just for you.
Not the least of this book’s merits is that – despite the Chinese official denials of espionage – the author shows how for China (like any other country?!) espionage is the way to get on, business in the widest sense as usual, systematic: “Whether you wish to call it economic espionage, research, intelligence gathering, trade devel- opment strategies, R&D research, competitive intelligence, or whatever, the acquisition of trade secrets, inventions, and the like means that such information gathering being directed against US economic interests is neither unusual nor unprecedented.”
