But that "right" is a "moral right", that us perhaps want to impose on it. Not sure if it is an enforceable law.
If we stick to the moral approach. China might see it as hypocrisy as well. From their point of view they can say "well you stole to improve your industry, you burned coal like it was nobody's business to ramp up your steel mills, now you tell us we have to be green, and waste all this money duplicating R&D effort -- that's not fair, and it is our _right_ to do however we please".
Now practically I don't agree with that, but from a more rational position, I could see their point, as well.
It also seemed rather silly when we make fun of Chinese for stealing our high tech technology (stealth, radar, etc). It would seem pretty irrational and wasteful from their point of view _not_ to spend $100k to bribe some spy and instead do spend $10b developing stuff from scratch.
No one has a problem with China emulating the things the US did to grow its economy that were good, such as allowing women to work and developing a highly educated workforce. However, we would not want them to use slavery or ignore the environmental impact of coal use because we now know that those were bad things. Repeating our mistakes is bad for the world and bad for China, as the Chinese are seeing for themselves the pollution derived from over-reliance on coal.
One should also note that China is not some innocent bystander in this since Chinese companies have sought and obtained patents to stifle competition as well. I also think the distinction made between "developed" and "developing" countries is not useful in this case. China has the second largest economy in the world and is very modern by many standards. They have gained great wealth from the "developed" countries least of all because the developed countries are their largest market for trade. China has a net trade surplus of hundreds of billions of dollars. They are not an underdog in this.
IP is just a made up way for incumbent producers to squash competition.
Do you feel that stealing source code is justifiable too?
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/01/google-hack-attack/
If so, then where do you draw the line?
What encompasses IP is not just technology though.
The concern is that there are foreign actors attacking businesses and doing much more than looking at technology. They are looking through financials for current accounts, revenue streams, customer lists, and pending contracts. They are taking the source code from software companies and schematics from hardware companies. They are effectively acquiring all the information necessary to replace those businesses, often without knowing what they have, and selling it higher up the food chain.
This particular actor in the article looks like really low hanging fruit compared to what other companies are warning they are being attacked by.
The article quotes Stewart as saying: If they did it fair and square, more power to them. But to cheat at it is wrong.
This seems really problematic to me: it's not like all US companies do it "fair and square," and as a sovereign country, it seems like China has every right to summarily ignore IP, or to establish morals that don't care about protecting foreign IP.