OP > "Call me when they invent something new. Call me when they come up with some incredible idea that we haven’t had and they built some technology that we haven’t had. Because so far it’s all imitative."
Here's something I've been following that the U.S. seems to be lagging behind on relative to China:
> "One key to LONGI’s success in the ingot and wafer space may be its equipment, which is supplied by a company for whom LONGi is the sole client. “The core technology is in the hands of equipment suppliers,” notes Dr. Tian Xie, the director of quality management at LONGi."
I've not seen any examples of similar-scale monocrystalline production systems in the USA. The basis of their large-scale monocrystalline tech is the Czochralski method, c. 1915. Is this imitative? Sure. All technological development is, everything builds on what came before, and that's true for the USA as well.
As far as IP, my impression of China's tech sector is that they generally view ideas to be cheap, and the real challenge is seen as implementing those ideas efficiently. IP doesn't really matter so much (I have heard this called the Shenzhen model) and is regularly traded between companies with few restrictions.
Historically such conflicts are not new; if you look into the German-British trade conflicts c.1900 over organic chemistry technology, dye patents and dye manufacturing, let alone later ammonia technology, it's very similar. In that case, Germany held the IP, Britain wanted it, so they did things like requiring German companies to build factories in Britain, and Germany would comply but with outdated tech, etc.
This is more or less what China has done with the US playing the role of Germany, only not so strategically clever. It was a deliberate play: if you want access to large Chinese markets and cheap Chinese labor, well, fine. We'll learn everything you know since you'll have to build factories here. Acting all surprised about the outcome - what did anyone expect to happen?
But this particular post is a rehash of things folks like Paul Graham have been saying for nigh onto (or more than) 20 years