Because they are likely working for institutions that are committing IP theft, in this case it's better to keep them honest, they don't have a culture that respects the rules and customs of other cultures (common law, contract law).
A lot of us think U.S. IP law has seriously overextended itself these days. I'm not sure I entirely blame China for not going along with it.
Sound logic
And unless anything changed since the Snowden revelations, the US is still conducting (or attempting to conduct) industrial espionage to this day.
In some cases they were in direct violation of agreements they had with other countries concerning such espionage[1].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_espionage#Germany
So can you blame China or the US... Not really everyone is playing the hand they were dealt the best way they know how.
And those that still benefit from the heads-tart due to their country/ancestors having done so, shouldn't play it holier than thou either.
Not to mention the whole hypocrisy, since the US has used corporate espionage and actual spying on supposed "allies" corporations since forever and still does, plus using their military and diplomatic might to ensure cheap resources, control of trade routes, use of its currently, and bending "banana republics" to its will and installing friendly lackeys to the detriment of their peoples. Case in point, this vintage gem posted today:
Cool, so you have no issues with China, India, Africa accelerating their use of fossil fuels.
I think that until maybe 70 years ago, countries did whatever they could to get ahead. If it was possible to accomplish, and it provided an advantage for the country, the country would do it. Nowadays, countries mostly do what they can get away with. The amount of things they can get away with has shrunk over the years, but there's still a hell of a lot of unexpected leeway, particularly if you have something someone else wants. For example, you can infer that Europe having cheap natural gas is more important than doing something about the Ukraine-Russia conflict.
Ultimately, that's it: in 2018, countries can enforce IP law a bit better than 300 years ago, and as a result they are going to. I don't think there's any American campaign to be more lenient on China for IP theft and I don't see such a campaign gaining traction. It certainly is interesting to watch the whole thing play out though.
I think this is my favorite article on the subject.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/08/china-is-cheating-at-a-...
Sam Slater moved to the US in 1789 and partnered with a textile manufacturer to recreate the technology from memory. (Amusingly what he did may not have even been a violation of IP law by today's standards)
https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2017/07/05/americas-industrial-re...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Slater
I think that US publishers, especially sheet music publishers, would copy British music and and publish it in the US, since I don't think that the US honored British copyright (at least some subset of it), but I can't think of good search terms to find any sources.
https://eh.net/encyclopedia/an-economic-history-of-copyright...
They started allowing non-citizens to get U.S. patents earlier:
"Americans could not obtain patents for imported discoveries, but the earliest statutes of 1793, 1800 and 1832, restricted patent property to citizens or to residents who declared that they intended to become citizens. As such, while an American could not appropriate patent rights to a foreign invention, he could freely use the idea without any need to bear licensing or similar costs that would otherwise have been due if the inventor had been able to obtain a patent in this country. In 1836, the stipulations on citizenship or residency were removed, but were replaced with discriminatory patent fees: foreigners could obtain a patent in the U.S. for a fee of three hundred dollars, or five hundred if they were British. After 1861 patent rights (with the exception of caveats) were available to all applicants on the same basis without regard to nationality."
https://eh.net/encyclopedia/an-economic-history-of-patent-in...
IP is the ultimate human creation, it has no basis in the physical world. If pretending ideas are property puts China at a disadvantage there isn't a moral or practical reason to do it.
The US can also choose to place massive tariffs on any goods coming out of China, making them highly uncompetitive. Their choice, it looks like.
Only in a hypothetical scenario where it's a battle of equals.
But China has worked itself into a corner now for several reasons:
1. It imports so little from the U.S. that it's almost out of stuff to put tariffs on.
2. Most of the things it imports from the U.S. are used in manufacturing in China, and then sold back to the U.S. as a finished product. So China's own tariff makes Chinese goods more expensive and less attractive in the U.S.
3. China still needs to import a metric ass-ton of soybeans from the U.S. It tried getting them elsewhere, like Brazil, but every other soybean-growing country saw the opportunity and raised prices. So putting additional tariffs on American soybeans will make food cost more in China, and there's nothing China can do about it.
I've heard there's additional pressure on China in regards to the soybean situation because harvest is already over for soybeans in the southern hemisphere. And you know who's sitting on a ton of soybeans ready for export? The U.S.
I don't know enough about soybean growing cycles to say if that last paragraph is still true or accurate, though.
IP theft is illegal in pretty much the entire industrialized world. China's big, but it's not bigger than everyone else combined.
There are dozens of supposed reasons to start a trade war with China, but most of those "reasons" are just saber rattling.
If we aren't going to start a trade war (or a real war!) Over things like Tibet, or the humans rights violations, or the million people that China has put into camps, then I don't see how something morally silly such as IP laws would be the tipping point.
I wasn't intending to use that comparison as a real justification of China's infringement; your point is a much better one as far as that goes. I brought up U.S. history in response to the characterization of China's culture as particularly disrespectful of "the rules and customs of other cultures."
ultimately, neither of these efforts succeeded.
but it is evidence that people and industries in China truly do understand the notion of protecting trade secrets, IP, etc.