If China was doing this with boots on the ground - with people physically acquiring this information on-site - it would be a major international incident. I don't quite grasp why doing the same thing over the Internet is significantly different.
Imagine there is one billion people- and they are deemed by their own government so incapable of innovating tech - and so not in need of future IP protection due to a lack of inventions, that such massive industrial espionage is deemed a better trade off.<p>For a Chinese developer- this is actually the hardest insult somebody could throw at them.
This is perfectly normal. As in, every country considers offensive hacking an espionage operation,not different from hiring moles at those companies to collect intel.<p>It isn't one way either,every developed country has multiple apt groups. What China does against american companies,america does against british companies,etc...