"Typical Chinese..."
I have to say; having visited multiple areas of China, I can say with some authority that copying is taught from a young age. Innovation is alien to the majority of Chinese people who are brought up through the never endless school and after-school activities.
It is worrying for those who enjoy freedom of thought, and wish these values spread to all humans. However, it also must be said: this is clearly the pattern the Chinese government knows as a 'safe' option', for now. If people are too middle-class, too intelligent, too self-aware, they will either leave PRChina or demand reform.
It has been expressed recently by very senior Chinese officials that the Great Firewall is too lax; I can see home VPN connections being unusable within the next year as a result of this ideology. Having your own set of mainland websites, closed to the majority of similar content, of foreign origin, spurs on the new IPV6 add-on ability to finalise DNS for Chinese and Russian use, meaning they don't even need to bother with the pinyin romanised equivalent.
Copying is supported by the regime and that's not going to change in the next five years.
I do worry about China in the future, but I also worry about the ridiculous state of our own set of countries, with populist parties, keen to make their name known, safe in the knowledge they only have four or five years to 'get things right' before they will, likely, be voted out.
Our countries are now short-termist as a result. The one thing that can be said of China, is that the current growth and ability to pull people out of food poverity would not be possible if they adopted a democratic solution.
Check out the 'East Asian Model' for economics; there is a reason why China has chosen the path it has chosen.