When The First Punic War started, the Romans barely had a navy; the Carthaginians had the most powerful fleet in the entire Mediterranean. Guess who the Romans copied their navy from? Answer: Carthage.
The Romans copied their architecture, art, religion, culture, and infantry tactics from the Greeks.
The city of Rome harbors the most obelisks in the world. Some were taken direct from Egypt due to the Roman conquests; some are copies.
Starting to see a pattern here?
The Romans did not originate any of these ideas. They borrowed (or stole) the very best ideas from all over the Mediterranean, made improvements, and built an empire that dominated the entire Mediterranean region for hundreds of years.
Now look at China.
Today, China is a leader in emerging industries such as solar power, wind power, electric vehicles, batteries, high-speed rail, AI, commercial drones, 4G and 5G.
China has 227 supercomputers on the TOP500 list as of November 2019.
Just like the Romans, China did not originate any of these ideas. China is borrowing the very best ideas from all over the WORLD to speed up its development. As the saying goes, there's no need to reinvent the wheel.
And once China has caught up, it can begin pushing forward into the next generation of technologies.
TSTO spaceplanes.
http://english.chinamil.com.cn/view/2019-10/23/content_9658969.htm
China developing TBCC hypersonic engine.
https://www.janes.com/article/85592/china-developing-tbcc-engine