Seems like China would have an incentive to get the other IP from Airbus's suppliers to make their own competitor.
Let's be honest here. Everyone has an incentive to gain insight into what everyone else is doing.
Everyone is spying on everyone else.
I don't know a company that doesn't. How far would they go? That depends. Sometimes governments help...
Lots of companies don't pay attention to their competitors aside from just passing glances. Sometimes your competitions action is not in any way visible to you, for instance when trying to win top secret gov design contracts. When you are on the bleeding edge or the only one working on something, there is just no need. I could come up with a lot of reasons why spying is useless(not saying it doesn't have a use, just not useful in every case as you propose)... but i guess i am confident in things, rather than paranoid. Worrying about what someone else is doing is just wasting time, unless they are coming for you.
There is never a single company working on the bleeding edge. Those who are take a lot of precautions to keep their secrets and are keen to learn their competitors' secrets.
If you work on the cutting edge in tech just send your CV to your company's main competitor. They'll be quick to invite you for interview... To buy your competitor's product to take it apart and study it is also a time-honoured classic. These are just basic examples.