It is of course theft, my point was that I assume the west is also taking whatever they can get so that it would be hypocritical to blame China for doing it.
Eh, that's kind of rationalizing away the threat posed by China's habitual targeting of US military tech, specifically in aviation.
I'll believe China has corrected its dirty sourcing ways when they build their own reliable Mach 2 Fighter Jet from scratch without reading Lockheed's homework first.
Where is the difference to what the USA and USSR respectively Russia did and probably still do to each other? Or the USA allegedly still spying on Airbus? If everybody does it, why only blame China?
