A lot of countries develop by copying. I mean, there was a point when Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, etc. were “copying” and often making inferior products. But they eventually became innovative in their own right. China is already innovating in some spaces.

Actually, America even did that during the Industrial Revolution. Francis Cabot Lowell tried to obtain the designs for a power loom on a visit to England. He couldn’t get the designs so he memorized how one worked. The English even searched his bags when he was leaving to make sure he didn’t steal the designs. But they couldn’t search his noggin and that’s how America got a textile industry.

Many of the difficulties we westerners have understanding the chinese culture and mentality can be alleviated by learning about the Chinese concept of "face".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_(sociological_concept)

Now this is fairly basic and often cited in discussions such as this one, but it still plays a huge role in the Chinese mindset and under which their subconscious decision-making is happening.

Interestingly this has a lot of parallels to Klingon culture and their understanding of honor, if you happen to be a trek nerd.

Well part of it is China was a severely underdeveloped country. They had to play catch up and so they traded access to their large labor market in exchange for technology transfers agreements.

That said, I think it would be incorrect to say their economy is currently based on copying. They publish more high impact research papers these days than any other country and are technological leaders particularly in green energy. This has been such a rapid change though that I think people’s perceptions of the Chinese economy lag the reality.

Because they produce it anyway for various companies and then have their specific product lines, equipment, everything they aren't ordered to destroy and can reuse? Because IP laws are in a weird place there and many international relations are decided by the party, that have local production interests' in mind? Because they are actually good at R&D but as an economy oriented towards global market they choose to play safe and instead produce X but cheaper, dumping the price, as most of us won't buy anything original coming from there with that rep you yourself state?

Forgotten Weapons channel (that has a dedicated c/ommunity on Lemmy) reviewed a couple of their old brandless Type-something guns and the thing with them wasn't that they were blindly copying soviet guns, but tested and mixed components and ideas from different ones to achieve their goals, with one of them being standartization, and using the factories that are already running with small correction to their work rather than starting from the scratch. They adapt what works and produce it in bazillions of units.

I'm not a China fanboy and dislike their regime, but there couldn't have been a strong chinese economy without western companies chasing after cheap labor there. This golem was on clay feet before, but after a while it gained some independence. Not many companies who entered there balls deep can pull it off without a significant loss.

I know nothing of Chinese, but there should be a common name for their vagina dentata politics that make even pronounced enemies been dependant on them.