You know why western stuff is very expensive? Becos they spend lots of money on unnecessary stuff like cosmetic and presentation which bears no effect on its combat effectiveness, multiple the cost 4-5 times..
Of course you'd say that. The "Cosmetic and Unnecessary Stuff" that you are referring to....is called "QUALITY", which obviously doesn't exist in Chinese products. When you don't produce anything and copy from others, the Quality doesn't exist in that process. In fact, the only thing you can NEVER create or add by re-engineering or copying a product.....is its QUALITY. As that Quality Assurance process, didn't come with stealing or copying. It's a process that takes place at the OEM's facility.
Quality has a HUGE impact on the combat effectiveness. Take a look at your jet engine industry. Do you think the Chinese don't know or can't build jet engines that the US and the Russians have been building since WWII? Absolutely they can, and they have many models too.
Have they've been struggling with it even with having trillions of dollars, thousands of scientists and many stolen and purchased copies of different systems? Heck yes. Why? Because of the Low Quality in engine manufacturing.
The result is an engine that has either VERY LOW MTBF (breaking down easily and every few dozen of hours vs. hundreds or thousands of hours like the GE or PW engines), or stops working randomly during spool every few hours. Which means it can stop working in flight and that's risking millions of jets and human lives!!! That's quality for you.
A simple example of "high quality" is a simple basic ECG machine. Low quality machine from China, compared to GE or Siemen's ECG machine, may entirely NOT show ST changes / elevations in your heart's electrical system, resulting in ignoring a Heat Attack and losing a life.
Higher quality machines would show the smallest deviation, drops or elevation in your heart's electrical activity, resulting in quickly identifying the severity of the problem and getting help ASAP, resulting in saving lives.
So Quality saves lives, sells more, brings more satisfied customers, and bring billions of profits (Apple, Google, Lexus, Mercedes, GE, Prat and Whitney, LM), are few examples of high quality producers.