"There is clearly an ambition to graduate beyond IP theft and become more of a leader,"
I disagree.
China has been reverse-engineering stuff since the 1950s and I don't see them "graduate" to this sort of "skills".
The only way to stop PRoC from stealing other people's ideas and/or design is booby-trap those so-called designs so that when they try to replicate it in their lab something horrible happens.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
