LOL.

I can barely recall the last time Motorola has something worth stealing..

Don't complain too loudly

Western companies use China as their cheap workshop with lax standards and to achieve production and quality goals they frequently ship goods, machines, etc. with Intellectual Property attributes.

So some of the blame lies in in the West. For example Apple products are manufactured in China, in fact they wouldn't have economic production without China, and this requires that Apple supply plans and test procedures to Foxconn.

Some Western companies inspect these subcontractors but they don't realise that Western technology is frequently used to make 'knock offs' often in late evening/overnight shifts. I have witnessed this in several factories in GuangXi Province in south-western China.

More likely to be the other way round these days

As I hear it, many mobile operators think that Chinese companies are no longer copying their western competitors, but have overtaken them in the technology race. If rumours are true, these companies are now rated more highly than Ericsson and NSN in terms of their capability. So much so, that the old big two are now copying the Chinese.

Undoubtedly, Chinese culture has less respect for Intellectual Property (whatever that really means), but now they must be paranoid about espionage. A friend in one Chinese company reported that all of his USB ports were controlled and encrypted, and his DVD burner had been locked down and the driver replaced with a CD ROM driver. There is also talk that online storage is inaccessible from inside the company and that every transaction is logged and analysed.

It is somewhat hypocritical, though, to only point the finger at Chinese companies when talking about industrial espionage. After all, they are only copying what western companies have been doing for years. I reckon it will take another 5 years before they'll be as competent as the US in logging all of our data.