1. If the United States does not honor Chinese IP, that calls into question all patents in the United States. It sends a message that American courts will ignore intellectual property when the US government tells them to. Law becomes political and arbitrary.
2. Discussion of Chinese non-respect for IP is hugely overblown. Compared to other developing countries, Chinese IP enforcement is actually fairly good, and it's been improving rapidly over the past several years. Nowadays, Western companies regularly sue over IP in Chinese courts, and they usually win. China is one of the largest venues for IP litigation in the world now.
Given the huge volume of patent royalties that American companies earn in China, it would be very foolish for the US to blow up the global patent system. The US probably has more to lose here, given that it's a more developed country with more IP.
Ah yes, this is partially true: in national courts in China, foreign companies often are successfully able to defend their IP, only to find that enforcement relies on separate local jurisdictions which have little interest in enforcing rules against their own.
I'm not sure about this one. One of America's virtues is that she tries to play by the rules (emphasis on "tries", though). It's why we follow the Geneva Conventions. I really, really don't like China, but I also have a bit of a visceral reaction to the "two-wrongs-make-a-right" mindset that seems to underlie this statement.
However, the question also becomes important: if China stole American IP to develop these patents, does she have any right to them? I'd analogize this to the legal precedent of "fruit of the poisonous tree". This precedent states that cops can't raid your home without a warrant, find evidence, and use it against you: they obtained that evidence in an illegitimate fashion, so it's no longer valid. I could rationalize that if China stole our tech to develop hers, she has no right to that tech in the first place.
1. If the United States does not honor Chinese IP, that calls into question all patents in the United States. It sends a message that American courts will ignore intellectual property when the US government tells them to. Law becomes political and arbitrary.
2. Discussion of Chinese non-respect for IP is hugely overblown. Compared to other developing countries, Chinese IP enforcement is actually fairly good, and it's been improving rapidly over the past several years. Nowadays, Western companies regularly sue over IP in Chinese courts, and they usually win. China is one of the largest venues for IP litigation in the world now.
Given the huge volume of patent royalties that American companies earn in China, it would be very foolish for the US to blow up the global patent system. The US probably has more to lose here, given that it's a more developed country with more IP.