That seems essentialist. Chinese incentives are aligned with a lack of IP protection right now. For instance, IIRC, bunny’s explanation of gongkai (https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297) explains that Chinese companies freely trade chip designs because they make money off of manufacturing, regardless of who designed it.
> Chinese incentives are aligned with a lack of IP protection right now.
Even that is essentialist. In some areas, sharing IP is beneficial to the originators and incentives are aligned. In other areas, not so much.
Duxiu makes money selling access to their collection of scanned books. Their incentives are not aligned with having others use those scans for free. Currently, such cases seem to be mostly handled under the most general provisions of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law (反不正当竞争法), but new amendments are likely to make it more explicitly illegal https://www.whitecase.com/insight-alert/china-releases-draft... ("Improperly obtaining or using another business operator's commercial data")
Patents and copyright are intended to encourage publishing of information (and profitability of individuals so they can establish themselves with economic mobility and unlock more potential investments for the world) rather than keeping it as trade secret. That doesn't mean they always do their job, but neither will there always be people running a company or a nation who can maintain such sharing in the face of competitive pressures during different times.
