Leaving history aside (do we really want to apply 16th century economics rules today? No) your statement that any country would do the same thing is untrue in many ways. There are IP laws that protect a comoany's right to keep its secrets and extract value out of them for a number of years. That's a bit too long in some cases but this is what makes modern economy possible. A company invests tons of money in R&D and then gets it back through patents they can protect.

For a government to extort companies to give up their IP is to steal, no mincing words.

Especially if the companies and people given access to the information extracted are close to the government, it's just another tool for them to control the economic environment with politics.

To claim this is some Robin Hood scheme that will bring equality in the world is to say stealing from rich countries is ok and we should do it more, companies be damned. It's essentially an extreme firm of communism and as someone who lived in that system for a while and is has first hand experience of how frustrating corrupted governments are to doing business, I can point at virtually all attempts to make it work and we can all see how they failed.

Chins wants to be competitive at someone else's R&D expense.

Edit: China improving is terrifying would you like to have that political system in your country? If yes most of would would rather have freedom of speech which btw allows us to have this conversation without fearing a knock on the door and prison for life.