the only thing approaching 'stealing corporate secrets' in this is detecting bribery by european corporations trying to win contracts

Is there something actually proven and more comprehensive, than speculation from two decades ago? Nearly all of the concerns listed in your Echelon link, are political in nature (eg about Princess Diana, or the five eyes with Canada spying on two British ministers for Britain in 1983), not examples of industrial IP theft.

Baseless claims won't cut it. The US has had by far the world's largest economy for the last two decades. There should be dozens of legally proven - court cases - examples of intellectual property theft far worse and larger than anything China has done, given the scale difference of the economies over that time and the supposed capacity to hoover up global communications and put it to use in industrial espionage.

Saying that well: here's one example, or here's two examples across 30 years, is not good enough to indict the world's largest and most technologically advanced economy for being rampant industrial thieves. To show a comprehensive pattern of deep industrial espionage, and to show that it isn't more along the lines of routine espionage that occurs between any two great economic powers, requires a lot more proof.

Pen and paper.. best defense.

Foreign governments are not concerned with spying on you for the sake of tailoring ads to you. They are concerned with furthering state objectives, which may include proxying traffic through your computer for the purpose of concealing origin, infiltrating public and private infrastructure for the purpose of sabotage, exfiltrating corporate and state secrets, etc.