My read is that the US has over-indexed heavily on "intellectual property" and that position is profitable, but an overall net drag on innovation and research.
China is much less indexed on IP, and often outright ignores it. This allows them to be much more competitive in innovation over the long term, but at short term reputational damage.
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From the US side - if you're a company operating in a restrictive, patent encumbered space... it absolutely feels like an unfair field. Those other companies are able to ignore the restrictions you're hemmed in by (steal).
From the China side - if you're a company operating outside of compliance with licensing and IP, you get a reputation for "just stealing" even when your research is novel and impactful.
Of the two - I believe the US is "more incorrect". The current IP laws feel a lot less like encouraging innovation and a lot more like government enabled and funded rent-seeking.
For example, let's not pretend the frontier AI labs aren't violating copyrights on a massive scale.
There have been other subtle examples of US companies being cavalier as to IP over the years, but courts (and the US government) have pretty much allowed companies to do so without so much as a wrist slap.
100+ years ago, US built its own empire on IP from the mainland Europe, so it's all turntables turning.
It's funny how the US is amazing because it takes the worlds research, but China is horrible because it steals IP from companies it invests in.
Whatever, even if you ignore the company IP side of things, 8 out of 10 top 5G research Universities are Chinese now.
Not long ago I remember reading that Britain was complaining about how Germany was creating counterfeit items with british labels and that Made in Germany back then was something imposed on them to deal with this situation. It was some sort of Trade conference in Europe in the 19th century I believe, but I cannot find that book anymore.
I want to give grace to people who have outdated perspectives on China. China's journey in development is extraordinarily compressed. It's gone through more stages within a single generation than countries do in a century. People's perception will take time to catch up. Unless you're an avid China watcher, the changes in China can really surprise people.
One may worship the development, but let's not forget what China is at its core.