There are so many things the author got wrong that this is more of a creative writing than anything. One of the key thing he got wrong, was that Americans view

There are so many things the author got wrong that this is more of a creative writing than anything. One of the key thing he got wrong, was that Americans view cheating as bad but Chinese (and rest of the world) do not. 1, our tribal mind naturally groups who we deem as other in groups. so if you identify as American, and see reports that some Chinese groups/individuals steal something, it registers as "Chinese steal"; but if fellow Americans steal, it registers as "Group(like race)/Individual X steals", and the group X is probably not a group you are part of. Also, you hardly hear about people/companies following the law, because those are not news worthy. 2, developing countries tend to be behind not just in economy, but also public consensus and regulation. i.e. ponzi schemes ran rampant during the 80s/90s in China, that's not because Chinese love ponzi schemes more than Americans, but due to Chinese people and regulators not being familiar of those scams. Same is true for IP, copyright, etc, as more Chinese individuals get harmed by those types of theft, the public consensus has been shifting and regulations are catching up. 3, author touched on this, generally speaking, poor and rich people has a higher possibility to cheat, the former due to realization that the system is rigged against them, so taking from the man is justified; the latter, is more of a reverse effect of those who are most skillful at taking from others tend to rise to the top. Combine this with the effect that the law-abiding American middle class have a higher chance of interacting with the immoral (hackers, IP thieves or just ruthless corporations) or poor (refugees or illegal immigrants) foreign entities than the law-abiding foreign middle class citizens. It's quite easy to come to a conclusion that foreigners are less moral than Americans. 4, as an American, author is probably going to be more familiar with how foreigners steal from Americans than vice versa. For example, do you know that Chinese shows are more widely available on Youtube (illegally) than the reverse?