You're out of date, a lot of that is in the past. They've still got a way to go, but they've been rapidly cleaning up their act, largely because so many Chinese companies are developing their own IP. They are doing what the US did. Rip of European IP until they had IP based industries of their own then get religious about it.
You couldnt be farther from the truth. US ripping off European IP? Almost all of the IP in semiconductors in US based not european, yet EU pays nothing by means of producing satellite communication equipments. Name a thing that US ripped from EU?
A bit further even, 18th to late 19th century. The U.S. was stealing every kind of IP it could get from Europe, from patented inventions to reprinting publications ignoring copyright.
The history of Hollywood is also a fun read, it basically came into existence by filmmakers fleeing from Edison demanding people to buy licences for patented film cameras IIRC.
Regarding IP, the US developed exactly the same as China does now: First the country was underdeveloped and mostly agrarian. In this period it stole IP massively, bootstrapping its own intellectual niches in this way. After a while those niches build up significant output and want to protect their own IP from others. The country starts to create and enforce its own IP laws.
