I think of it like this...
When USA was new, we were a bastion of creativity. We didn't acknowledge the Old Country's laws on intellectual property, and we were the better for it. Things were crazy; you did stuff and you didn't let someone else that the thing in your head had ownership by someone else. There was a long period in which our goods were beneath European quality.
Not much time passes, and new and unique things were made here. The regime for patent/copyright protection got just as authoritarian and wicked in protecting 'stuff'. Hollywood was one such case - in which the devices to make movies was patented and the company that made them wanted their cut. The escape to California was to avoid those fees.
Again, China's been playing the same long game. "Rip off others' IP, allow extreme growth by being very liberal with copyright/patent, and eventually playing very protectionist once the economy is stable and advanced". This isn't anything unique with China, or the US, or anyone else.
> How do you guys reconcile your own torrenting,
Because once a country hits the protectionist point, they usually go way overboard and stifle all sorts of things. It pisses people off - is it really piracy if you buy a blu-ray and download it? Is it really piracy if you download a turd film and delete it? There's a lot of edge cases that are called piracy which in reality aren't. It's just called that cause Disney et al have lobbied to call it that.
Also, as I have gotten more money, I have been more willing to pay for media. When I was poorer, I was spending perhaps $10 for a ticket per every 6 months to a movie.
> usage of sci-hub etc
Sci-hup and "academic piracy" is a whole different ballgame. Predatory firms have put paywalls in place that alienate the creators of the papers, the reviewers of the papers, and the academics who use the papers, for $37 a paper. These predatory firms add nothing, and deserve to die. But again, this is completely different than movie/tv/music media.
> with the tendency to portray us as monsters
Humans have a bad tendency to 'otherize' people. See, you're Chinese, and not in my peer group, so my decisions have little effect on you. I can also have a poor opinion of you (having not even know you!) and people in my peer group don't care too much.
And it happens the other way around. Americans (USA) are horrible aggressors and evil empire and bad. Lots of places agree with that. But they don't know me, my friends, or my social groups. And in the end, other people 'otherize' the US, knowing what happens in DC isn't what we're like where we live.
It's best to think of this as "out of sight, out of mind, out of emotion". Because it is all too easy to consider someone else on a different point on this planet as "monsters". Eventually, we'll change that; although I think the internet like here is doing the ground work.