You have obviously never worked in manufacturing .
I have and I have seen how competitor products are analysed and copied within a flyshit of breaching patent.
And if its not economically viable to do the patent avoiding copy, then the the royalties are reluctantly paid.
Ill give a few examples:
(a) The VW diesel cheat. VW in conjunction with others devised the "Diesel Chat" to avoid the "Add Blue" patented technology owned by a competitor
(b) Samsung vs Apple vs Samsung These two hi-tech have been involved in patent/IP battle for years
(c) If there is IP/Patent theft by China's product owners then like Sansung vs Apple , there are legal remedies.
(d) If the owners of patents/IP contract to share that technology as a condition of entering the Chinese market. That's not theft. There were the same accusations leveled at other emerging manufacturing countries in history: -Japan -USA etc etc.
PS: I remember visiting a very famous auto manufacturer's R&D facility in the late 1980s and I was amazed to see the work being put into analysing its competitors latest product. It had bought 5 units: -dismantled one unused unit into its base 20K parts add measured & analysed them -dismantled two others that had been tested under extreme conditions & measured & analysed the results -the other 2 were being field tested under normal working conditions to measure features & benefits.
All this data was then fed into its "Big Blue" computer to compare & contrast the data with that of its own product with the intention of copying /improving the competitors advantages for the new product.
All of this was carefully orchrastrated to minimally avoid technically infringing on patent./IP rights of others but to an outsider it mostly looked like copying.
In this field as in other manufacturing, global diversification in design & manufacture is narrowing and that is evidenced in across industry consolidation of ownership in the West eg: Toyota, VW etc (two new Toyota models are BMW & Subaru badge engineered which, IMO, is the fine end of the acquisition wedge)
