That assessment is at least 20 years old. China rightfully set the rules clearly: anyone wanting to profit from its market, either to sell to or to manufacture and export from must transfer their tech know how. I know businesses that were not willing to do so and did not move their manufacturing to China. Others gambled that the cost benefit was worth it and some found their products ripped off by Chinese competitors, but it's wrong to believe that China's success came from ripping off western expertise. I was in China 20 years ago looking to manufacture furniture that I designed. At the time, the US furniture industry was being decimated by China made furniture and crying bloody murder that the Chinese were making crap products. I have been to multiple factories and can attest to this: their manufacturing space (machinery/ storage) was exponentially bigger than anything in the US and their equipment was all imported top end German machinery. They could make in a day what would take a month in US factories. They had only 2 weaknesses that I could find, 1. they didn't know what western markets wanted and begged for western businesses to tell them and 2. They couldn't make low volume, difficult designs like the one I had. So yes, they copied whatever they could get their hands on that was Western, to show they could do the same for a lower cost and hoping to get selected by western manufacturers. Ikea in Shanghai was surrounded by Chinese vendors making copies of Ikea products for 25% cheaper, or evolutions of such products, primarily to showcase their capabilities. Today's China is leading or at par in a number of advanced technologies like solar, batteries, telecoms, space, ... It makes sense, they invest heavily in R&D, have few regulatory hurdles and graduate nearly 5 million STEM students a year. The West is simply not equipped to challenge the sheer size of China's competition. The recent European challenge to the so called Chinese EV dumping is entirely BS. 70% of the EV import market comes from Tesla China and most of the other imports are from local companies making their cars on the edge of the EU. The Chinese pure players only imported 3k cars in 2022 while western manufacturers sell millions of cars in China. The fact is, the European threats are entirely political. My point is, if it wasn't Taiwan it would be the Uyghurs or COVID or whatever the US decided to rattle China then impose economic sanctions to slow their access to foreign markets. We accuse China of neo colonialism (how ironic) with its Belt and Road initiative, then turn around and make a deal to create a competing economic corridor with partnering nations. The US spent decades evangelizing the glory of trade and free markets, with sophisticated economic theories about global production efficiency. Today, we've gone full 180. Decoupling is the word. We want to bring manufacturing home, subsidize our businesses, create barriers... Let's see how this all works out. I'm all for fun projections!