Not to defend the Chinese but this has been going on for all of human history.
Alexander Hamilton himself was in charge, with George Washington's approval, in covertly stealing English textile secrets by offering exorbitant pay to Scottish textile plant workers/designers to compete and avoid the high cost of English clothing in the late 1700's.
US and European corporations share a lot of the blame by agreeing willingly to hand over intellectual property over to the Chinese. Nobody put a gun to their head. Combined with the Chinese government's stealing the technology whenever possible and undervaluing their currency, compared to the rest of the world, and you have the situation were in now.
Google was one of the few exceptions who left the Chinese market when they caught on to the hacking of their servers in China and refused to hand over their code.