China also had made industry espionage their way to go in these things. They are not even hiding it anymore. It's almost comical how much they copied SpaceX. And I'd be surprised if they hadn't supply-chained themselves into some level of access in all the big aerospace corpos by now. But Europe? Developing this kind of stuff from scratch in a few years without an unregulated messy startup ecosystem and no army of state sponsored hackers? No chance.

Curious - Any sources? Looking at publicly available details and copying them might be intellectually dishonest if it was a piece of coursework, but this isn't an academic research project. Taking features from something that's known to work is the fastest way to get to something working.

If there's actual smuggling of designs or trade secrets going on, I'd be more interested. But if it's just "the rocket looks the same on the outside", that's hardly "industrial espionage".

>China also had made industry espionage their way to go in these things.

Few layman know this but France is one of the biggest industrial espionage players active in the US and Europe, after Israel of course.

In fact, according to Wikileaks diplomatic cables from Berlin quote: "France is the country that conducts the most industrial espionage [in Europe], even more than China or Russia."

Basically, every nation on the planet engages in espionage for its own benefit if they can get away with it. There's no honor amongst thieves.

Singling out China as if they're the only ones doing it, or the ones doing it the most, is both naive and hilarious.