I think in this case it is a curious example of human psychology. In most Pakistanis mind's the US has a mythical status in technological dominance. This isn't just true for Pakistanis, almost all peoples feel this way including Chinese in the past. But as one approaches the US, they feel they need to start removing these psychological barriers in order to meet or exceed the abilities of the best. Otherwise it becomes impossible. However for those who are nowhere on this scale of abilities, they must preserve the status quo because a quickly changing world is uncomfortable for most people. Especially one where they are still going absolutely nowhere.
It is entirely true that many Chinese organisations copy commercial product designs. But this is only those who do that! They are usually managed by uneducated older generations who have gone through the cultural revolution and do not have quite the "taste" and "style" levels of the West. They order their employees to go for these stupid copy designs but at the same time it works because it sells. However this is not all businesses in China and increasingly not the case. In fact China is responsible for quite a lot of innovation. Invisible because these days innovation is more detail oriented, it's transistor design, small modules, software changes, manufacturing tolerances etc. This is happening and the more people pretend it doesn't exist, the further they fall behind. China is an industrial power and an innovator approaching that of Japan, USA, and Germany.
Design copies are superficial anyway. It's only a surface attribute. What lies underneath is what's really interesting. For the small private car makers who are still copying surface designs, they're engineering underneath are usually crap or obsolete anyway. J-10 and Lavi/ J-31 and F-35 are entirely different beasts. Japan can make great cars, they cannot anymore make great planes without much investment and time.