While I found the original article believable and interesting, I can't help but wonder whether there's more than meets the eye to all this "Oh yeah, China is evil" movement that's developing... The US government has been trying to get China to "behave" for quite some time. One of the very obvious points of contention is copyright law - as someone once said, "Chinese copyright is the right to copy anything they want".…
It's especially interesting given that the U.S. model for IP is pragmatic rather than ideologic, i.e. temporary government-granted monopolies are a necessary evil we accept in order to further technological and creative progress for the benefit of all citizens. Considering the opinion many here have that innovation in the U.S. is stifled rather than encouraged under the modern politicized IP model, it might be enligh…
If IP laws were enforced in China, Chinese companies would be further kept at the bottom of the food chain, making cheap products in sweatshops at very low margins. The IP policies in China is meant as way to jumpstart domestic companies by letting them compete in higher-margin value-added goods when they don't have the ability to do their own research. The policy-makers know that they suck at most things, especially as a venture capitalist, so they go with the least-interfering approach.
Of course, eventually they'll have to enforce IP to sustain their own R&D, once their industries mature.