[throwaway4good]

In the 90es China used to send up satellites for US companies; cheap and cheerful until a major accident happened:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelsat_708

And after the accident; the Chinese fixed their rockets and the Americans started their boycot; including banning them from the ISS leading to the space station program the CZ5B is a part of.

Today the Chinese space program is a source of national pride and is cherred and followed as the US space program was in its heyday.

[Fatnino]

The Chinese fixed their rockets using classified information that the American companies leaked in their report on the crash. This gave the Chinese missile industry a major advance in guidance tech.

In recent years the "cherred" (sic) Chinese space program has heavily borrowed without asking from the soviet and other world space programs to race through a checklist of space achievements the Chinese want to pretend they developed themselves.

For example: see Shenzhou 5's uncanny resemblance to a Soyuz capsule.

Now, to be sure, China hasn't cloned these 1:1. They have even managed to hit checklist items that the rest of the world hasn't got to yet, like communicating with a spacecraft landed on the far side of the moon. But foreign design bones are deeply embedded in their entire program and it's plainly visible to any that care to look.

Contrast this behavior to the US/Soviet space race where each side developed unique spacecraft and spacestation designs with unique abilities and unique degrees of success. With one exception: in the late 80s, on the verge of their collapse, the soviets copied the American spaceshuttle. They even made it better than the American version in almost every way but didn't realize that the entire concept was a huge boondoggle that was a mistake for the US to even develop and fly.