It's only piracy if others do it, isn't it.
Good luck trying to sue the Chinese military for contract breach of installing software on more computers than specified...
Further, note that this is an instance of piracy versus IP theft that then directly competes with the original source, as a coordinated playbook with government support to advance local industries. It's pretty much apples & oranges.
As almost all companies that relied on their productivity to get ahead. China does blatantly copy tech in some cases. Companies accepted that risk.
Of course it is good for China to copy the technology, it is not that other nations are exempt from industrial espionage. That they do it so openly is due to the leverage they have.
I'll start with: I know I can never be unbiased about this.
But I'm much more comfortable with the US (and Europe, and other democratic societies) engaging in this sort of common-good "theft" than a country like China. The US et al. are of course flawed in our implementation of democratic principles, but I do not look forward to living under Chinese global political/economic dominance. I do not believe an authoritarian government in that position would be a good outcome for humanity.
I think there is room for robust discussion and argument on how long, and for what, patents or other pure ip protection should be granted. I don't believe permanently hiding knowledge, or locking it for indefinite time in the vaults of a single rent-seeking entity is right. But enforcemenbt of time and circumstance limited exclusivity is arguably worth some cost to society, as a means of incenting people and companies to invest in commercializing their innovation. Violating the agreed rules around those things - whether those are contracts, patents, or other forms, is wrong. Specifically, it is theft.
IP law is an attempt to recognize that there's some value in granting limited term immoral monopolistic rights because it net produces a better result longer term. That doesn't mean that IP law itself doesn't open up an immoral land grab and is itself open to abuse. Similarly, we obviously recognize that the commitments themselves may be immoral & thus can be broken (e.g. marriage to an unfaithful spouse) or licenses with immoral clauses should be free to be broken (e.g. you can't sell yourself into bondage).
That's not to say that your experience isn't one where the other player was immoral. I'm just trying to broaden the horizon of the discussion beyond your personal story to how we should think about IP more broadly. It's nowhere near as clear cut as you make it and that illusion stems from how the Western legal and education systems work (which is a whole other topic - passing off another's work in education is "plagiarism" whereas if you do it literature it's "ghost writing").