Hot take: Even if they did steal tech from US companies, who cares? I don't just say that about China supposedly stealing from the US, I think corporate espionage in general is by no means unethical, for either side and any other party. I'm against patents and trade secret legislation as a whole, and even most of the noncommunists on Lemmy claim to also be against them, so I ask you what makes this different? When we get corporate infighting like this, the consumer (AKA, us) wins as more competitive, improved, and better tailored options pop up especially for niches that the original did not serve very well. For the vast majority of human history, "stealing" of technology and unrelated parties taking and modifying it was not just common, it was inevetable. If you invent something, start selling it, and someone else decided to imitate it and also start selling it, up until just a few generations ago that was seen as a normal part of the development process and no one would have batted an eye, and it led to improvements in the technology, including some of the most important inventions from the pre-capitalist age. The phenomenon of corporations withholding technology for profit with the backing of the law is an extremely recent thing, and why should we be defending it in any form again?