[FilterSweep]

> There seems to be the underlying notion that: because it's China, any riposte is acceptable

I disagree. Rather, its: "Because its not anywhere else, you have no option to defend the business you have created for yourself and your employees."

This has very little to do with China and more to do with the company has little other options given the circumstances.

If I were a web developer of said clone company, and I noticed hotlink protection had been enabled (easily, 301s, 404s), I would have already scraped all of the content on the page (new content notwithstanding), and onError I would serve up the copy of the content I had saved locally.

The only thing I could imagine you doing besides the retaliatory measures listed above is removing the site from SERPs. However, Baidu won't respect your wishes.