The Chinese sent all their rocket engineers to Russia to study, and since then have developed what are quite clearly direct copies of Russian boosters, modules and space suits. Even the infrastructure for design, manufacturing and launching space vehicles in China are clearly derived from Russian designs.

The Chinese have also notoriously driven the Russians to distraction with repeated bulk orders of Russian fighters, which they then cancel after the initial 2 or 3 samples have been thoroughly reverse-engineered and copied. For most of the Cold War, China was licensed by MiG and Sukhoi to reproduce various designs, but since then have broken away from those contracts and are producing unauthorized clones. Russia is now very reluctant to sell China any new fighters such as the upgraded Su-34/35 models, as China is already in the process of producing unauthorized copies of them both.

China, like Russia before it, is playing it very smart indeed, avoiding unnecessarily enormous R&D expenses by copying entire designs or the best parts thereof from the West and using its incredible talents in cheap mass-production to quickly modernize their military much more quickly. Instead of being the usual decades behind the curve, they are able to maintain a mere years or even months behind the curve, all the while adding their own unique innovations.

Russians and Chinese don't need to copy the US. Ever seen a Russian or Chinese kid at school? Those people are generally pretty smart.