And Britain ripped off porcelain from China in the 1700s, bringing us full circle. (Until we go back another cycle, to Marco Polo. And another, to the Avars and the stirrup. Another, to the Silk Road, then on to...) It's sort of hilarious to think people wouldn't focus on copying inventions, given how much faster it is (for anyone!) than developing things from scratch. Describing it as some kind of national trait, rather than the standard response to someone else inventing things, is bizarre.

Heck, if someone really wanted to make a national-identity pitch, they'd have better luck talking about late-Ming isolationism and claiming that China is exceptional for sometimes not ripping off foreign innovations. That would be wrong too, of course, but at least it'd be better than a narrative which barely stretches back to the 1990s.