alt Hacker News> China was playing industrial catch up. They didn't have to (for example) reinvent semiconductors from first principles. They will surely support some form of IP law once they have been firmly established at the cutting edge for a while.
That argument was in vogue about 20 years ago, but it fell out of favor when China passed us on the most important technologies without slowing down.
It is funny that some people are still carrying the torch for it after it's been so clearly disproven.
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Copying and innovating are two very different things; most of China' s innovation has been incremental, to be kind. To keep up, the machine still needs to copy. Just like Japan did for decades until it became an industrial behemoth, so give them 10 more years and soon enough the western world will be doing the copying
I agree they’ve surpassed the west (or at least stopped solely playing catch up) in some areas.
But surely you can see how your upthread math of “250 years in 40 years” has a mix of mostly catch-up and replication and a sliver of novel innovation at the extreme tail end of that 250 year span?