It's hardly been successful with China (but I'm not advocating it as a solution).

That's because Chinese copyright infringement is mostly internal. You don't see sites protected by China distributing copyrighted content to the rest of the world.

Smart move, that's necessary lip service to IP treaties. One can extrapolate however, just about every device or widget I buy these days is made in China. What's noticeable is that many, many of them are identical to items that were once produced in the US, UK or Europe (I'm old enough to remember many of those original Western-made products).

Presumably, these items can now flood Western and other markets because they're out of patent and or the original manufacturer has gone bust, not so copyright/IP due to its long expiry date.

It will to the extent that it is able.

Like for instance, Australia's project Gutenberg tends to get things a few years before the US version because of local legal differences.

That difference is due to the grandfathering of the old 50-year rule for existing works when the Howard Government brought in the 70-year rule.