Chinese spying

Here is the perfect example of why China does so much industrial spying. Actions have consequences and one of the unintended consequences of a totalitarian communist society is that innovation is squashed. Free thought is not conducive to totalitarian rule so it is not allowed. Unfortunatly, this sort of "correct thought" and "political science" spills over in to engineering and manufacturing. A perfect example from The Washington Post - January 18th, 2017:

Finally, China manufactures a ballpoint pen all by itself
Chinese President Xi Jinping made headlines this week with a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that passionately defended free trade in the face of a worldwide surge in anti-globalism populism. But closer to home, a less dramatic story may paint a more complicated and nuanced picture of China's role in the global economy.

This story involves something as simple as the ballpoint pen — yes, that humble device you may well have lying around your desk or collecting dust at the bottom of your bag — and China's long and frustrating quest to manufacture it domestically.

This month, that quest has finally been fulfilled, and Chinese state media is all over it.

A bit more - crucial technology:

To anyone outside of the ballpoint pen manufacturing world, it might seem hard to understand what, exactly, is so surprising about this development. China already produces 38 billion ballpoint pens a year, according to China Daily, which is about 80 percent of all ballpoint pens in the world. That's a lot of pens, but there was a catch: China had long been unable to produce a high-quality version of the most important part of the pen, its tip.

And more:

Li's comments apparently sparked action, however, and this week, after a reported five years of research and development, the state-owned company Taiyuan Iron and Steel Group (TISCO) announced that it would begin mass-producing ballpoint pen tips and replace imports within two years. Here, you can see the technology:

More at the site - this is why China has to steal the technology. They have no ability to innovate for themselves. They copy, they do not create. The joys of a single big centralized government and one way of thinking. Mao's legacy propped up by hundreds of thousands of party apparatchicks who do not want to lose their cushy positions and their nice rice bowls. This is the reality that Antifa want to bring to America.