Well yes, as a matter of fact it does matter. China needs to innovate to get past the "middle-income trap," so while stealing and copying technology are shortcuts from poor to middle-class, invention and innovation are the drivers to the top.
There is a vast amount of innovation and R&D at all levels in China. The speed and range of product development in China is simply frightening. It is a myth at best and a lie at worst that China does not innovate and only copies.
The China state is investing massively on R&D, as are companies and even individuals. But as with all things, you can only invest so much before you start hitting diminishing returns and waste.
The biggest difference is in the west, because of the legal environment, companies have to pretty much make a new thing almost entirely from scratch to avoid getting caught up in endless (usually frivolous lawsuits), whereas in China, companies and people prefer to take what has already been developed and made, and use that as building blocks for their own innovation and products.
The western media typically only takes a very narrow, self-serving interpretation of innovation, and brands anything that looks or works remotely like something else as a "copy" without even bothering to learn the details of the new product, which almost always offers different and new features not found on the "original".
Logically speaking, it make the most sense for a newcomer to focus its R&D resources (which includes time) on truly cutting-edge innovations, rather than wasting its time and resources re-inventing the wheel. That is what China has been doing, and goes a very long way towards explaining how China has been able to catch up so fast.
From the west's extremely narrow and self-serving prospective, the west does more "revolutionary" innovation, whereas Chinese "innovation" tends to be more incremental.
But I believe that to be a largely superficial distinction which flies in the face of facts and reality.
As I touched upon earlier, the west's so called "revolutionary" innovations are usually only new superficially to avoid lawsuits.
Much of the work that goes into a new product is wasted on making it new and different for the sake of making it new and different so it doesn't get tripped up by existing patents. Function wise, there is often a disappointing lack of progress and innovation.
In stark contrast, the best Chinese innovations often eschew superficial changes and instead focus primarily on new functions and features while keeping the old shell.
In many important ways, I think western intellectual property protection laws has lost its way, and is fast becoming a hindrance to innovation and progress as opposed to being its enabler and protector as it is supposed to be.
Intellectual property protection has always been about compromise, trying to balance the rights and interests of the inventor and the society and country at large.
In the west, the emphasis has fallen far too heavily in favour of the inventor, and it is being harmful by both stifling competition, and also creating unhealthily large concentrations of wealth and power in the hands of far too few people.
Sure, inventors should be rewarded for their ideas and hard work, but the level of reward western inventors can expect is simply inefficient and getting on towards the absurd.
There are simply far too many billionaires in the world. In my book, 100 people with 10m each is far better for the economy and society than a single billionaire.
I have no doubt that all of the silicon valley start-up billionaires would have done exactly the same had the rewards available "only" been millions rather than billions. That means that the market is vastly overpaying for innovation.
All that extra money doesn't just come out of thin air, and is instead extracted from the economy and ultimately consumers.
Western IP laws allow inventors and companies to extra far more profit than is healthy, and concentrate that in too far hands. Apple's vast cash reserves is a perfect example.
Another useful case study to look at are all the legal court battles between Apply and Samsung/Sony.
In all those examples, IP laws are standing in the way of innovation and competition by allowing a single company to effectively monopolise a key technology that would effectively shut all competitors out of the market altogether.
The patent holder then abuses its legal position to demand exorbitant royalties, hamstringing competitors and/or forcing them to waste resources re-inventing the wheel enough to get its own patent to do the same thing only in a slightly different way.
There are many well known and well documented problems and flaws with China's disregard for IP, but the western model is far from perfect itself.
