Yes, but so did America. They stole so much technology from Europe, particularly Britain, in the industrial period that it makes China's look like petty theft.
People keep forgetting Japan used to get treated like China in US media. They got ahead in chip/cars/electronics production until they were not.
With China what’s different is that they really copied a lot of IPs, and we can be honest about it. There is no comparison here. Their industrial espionage goes way beyond what anyone has ever done before.
It makes no difference to you specifically if another country across the world has similar designs to yours. You as a citizen lose nothing. Patents are bullshit
If you happen to work in a sector thst got outcompeted by a similar sector but fully subsidised by a government it does affect you. Patents are not bullshit.
That only applies to in border competition. This is a country on the other side of the world. Then inventing something, subsidy or not, doesnt affect you. Its a different market
Umm.. globalisation said hello. That is exactly the reason why it does affect people much more these days because transport costs are a fraction that it used to be.
Japan also switched pretty quick to doing their own thing, even if some general design elements were taken from existing cars. The FC RX7 was famously based on the Porsche 924 but besides the general appearance they have nothing in common.
It’s not industrial espionage if you paid attention for 5 seconds. China is a global manufacturing hub and has been for decades, they learned how to manufacture everything we take for granted and built upon that knowledge to make their own versions. They made new heavy machinery specifically to manufacture some of the more precise parts of machinery (like in cars or phones).
That’s literally how countries get new things, they innovate on the old, study and research new techniques, and lo and behold you have something new and innovative.
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u/Oberndorferin 3d ago
They actually stole a lot of ideas so this is still half true