I'm not an expert in the field of reverse engineering but I have read in the past that it can be extremely difficult and end up costing more in time, effort, mo

I'm not an expert in the field of reverse engineering but I have read in the past that it can be extremely difficult and end up costing more in time, effort, money than designing from scratch. China has the luxury of being able to play catch up by purchasing technology. Why spend the next 20 years trying to develop it when you can pay Ukraine who already has the expertise/product and probably gave the Chinese a deal. It's just smart business. China apparently did something similar with BMW. They bought a BMW factory in Brazil (I think) for a couple of billion and disassembled it piece by piece and moved it to China. It saved them years of figuring out the how to of high tech auto engine manufacturing. Link to Story: http://tech.mit.edu/V126/N4/4long4.html http://tech.mit.edu/V126/N4/4long4.html