Mr. Wray we concur with your assessment. We have been monitoring the activity of the Chinese for quite some time. We also see activity to include intellectual property theft, attacks on currency as well as unfair trade balances that are causing grave damage to US property.
We believe that China is executing a well thought out and planned campaign to attack US networks, financial markets as well as weakening of the US by purchasing US property with ill gotten funds from mass production of products that were stolen by insider threats.
Amazon, DHGate and Alibaba all at fault
We all like it when our dollar stretches and we can buy more with less but this comes at a cost with China. China employs Chinese nationals to steal trade secrets and marketing information that allows mass manufacturing of good in China that are then sold into the US market. These counterfeit products ignore many of the patent laws and are seen all over various Internet marketplaces to include Amazon, DHGate and Alibab. The Chinese simply change one small detail and claim that they have a new product that is cheaper than the original US made product. What they do next is unbelievable. The profits from these schemes are then used to purchase US property, businesses and to buy out struggling US manufacturing businesses.
It's no secret that the US has lost it's edge in manufacturing over the years. Many small companies have closed because they cannot compete with China manufactured goods. China can forgo the huge research and development cycle to create new products again and again by stealing US companies concepts, ideas and intellectual property.
A Case in Point - Payload Race to Space
China is very much interested in beating the US in all frontiers. Recently we discovered that China was copying the plans of Elon Musk's Space X with their own reusable rocket technologies. They can compete because they don't have to pay high labor rates to manufacture the same reusable rockets yet companies don't see a problem with this because they are focused on the cost of the final product which in this case is getting a payload into space. While the Chinese are years away from catching Space X, it is with concern that we watch from a distance and see how quickly China is catching up in the payload to space race.
Espionage at the core of this activity is how the Chinese are able to manufacture equivalent yet cheaper rockets than US based companies that have to deal with minimum wage laws, have to source raw materials from US based companies and source and then have to pass stringent FAA and FCC requirements for launch permission, permits and frequencies for communications. The Chinese bypass large hurdles in the payload race to space by ignoring laws and restrictions and pushing forward. When the nation state makes the rules they can also change the rules to gain a competitive advantage. It's only a matter of time before we will see China selling dirt cheap payloads into space for fractions of what it cost today. We won't even bring up Blue Horizon, Jeff Bezos company that is also looking at reusable rocket technology.
Chinese company copying the Space-X rocket designs - Looks very similar to the real thing just like many other Chinese copies but without all the red tape
Why don't they stop it?
One of the problems with how China operates is that there are many individuals and even businesses that like to purchase products and services from China due to the lower cost. Even lower quality products are OK if you simply buy a few of the products instead of having one quality US made product that cost 3 or 4 times as much as the Chinese manufactured product. This problem didn't come to fruition overnight and it won't be easily solved until we balance trade and restrict Chinese nationals and companies from purchasing US assets, properties and interest.
On the popular Amazon web site, you need not look far to find knockoffs of patented US trademarked products selling cheaper than the original. A recent story on BuzzFeed outlines this product quite nicely.
As you can see the product looks identical and is priced similar to the real product on Amazon
The packaging is nearly identical and it's hard to tell the difference between the real and counterfeit product.
Understandably these companies such as Amazon have a hard job of policing their sellers. They want as many sales as they can get because they make money off of each shipment.
If you think this is bad, just start looking at Chinese nation state hacking which is how they get these designs in the first place.
References:
BuzzFeed.news - https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/its-really-easy-to-buy-counterfeit-products-on-amazon