The media often paint the U.S.-China trade brawl as a clash of two superpowers, or a matter of U.S. protectionism. But left understated is that current Chinese policies threaten, sometimes existentially, companies outside China—and something needs to be done about it.

China has always found ways to privilege its companies at the expense of foreigners. But in 2015, it dialed it up a notch when it launched the “Made in China: 2025” program that targets homegrown innovation in 10 high-tech industries, including information technology, aerospace and railways. It would base such innovation on the “assimilation and absorption of imported technology,” according to that plan.

One early case of such “assimilation and absorption” involved Kawasaki Heavy Industries, the firm that built Japan’s high-speed rail. In 2004, China invited Kawasaki to partner with them, saw all of Kawasaki’s intellectual property (IP) and plans and, after a few years of working together, fired the Japanese. China built the rest of its railways on its own, eventually consolidating its interests into one national rail company in 2015.

Now, with the Belt and Road Initiative, China is building rail capacity in other countries largely using what was originally Japanese technology. This has created ripples worldwide: Two European firms, Siemens and Alstom, have been attempting to merge their rail businesses as perhaps the only way to compete against the national Chinese rail company.

The Kawasaki case may well be the playbook Beijing adopted for various schemes. The U.S. ambassador to the World Trade Organization (WTO) last year echoed a years-long complaint that foreign companies are forced to transfer technology to access China’s marketplace. Foreign firms often acquiesce, given the promise of the fast-growing Chinese market. General Electric, for example, agreed to share technology when China started designing its own passenger jets in the late 2000s.

Lately, however, China has brazenly taken even when the companies say no. In 2017, DuPont suspected its Chinese partner of stealing its textile-polymer IP. Fellow U.S. chemicals firm Huntsman says that Beijing uses foreign-investment review panels as way to grill incoming companies for secrets. In January 2018, a U.S. jury found a Chinese wind-turbine maker guilty of stealing secrets from its supplier, Massachusetts-based AMSC.

When there is no partner to coerce, China has resorted to outright espionage. This is most prominent in semiconductors, the cornerstone for a homegrown information technology sector that China is so keen on. After China was rebuffed in its attempts to acquire Micron, the largest U.S. memory-chip maker, a Chinese state-backed chipmaker partnered with a Taiwanese company to develop technology. Instead of designing their own IP, that Taiwanese firm lured Micron’s engineers in 2015 and had them steal over 900 files before they left.

In 2016, a Chinese state firm tried to steal IP from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s largest contract chip maker. China may have attempted to hack Dutch firm ASML, too, which makes upstream machinery essential for chip making.

And according to an investigation by Bloomberg Businessweek that sent shockwaves through Silicon Valley, China infiltrated and planted chips into Supermicro’s motherboards, which then found their way to Google, Apple and Amazon servers. How much information was taken is still unknown.

The examples keep racking up. In July 2018, U.S. authorities arrested a former Apple employee before he could board a flight to China with secrets of Apple’s self-driving car project. Chinese intelligence officers hacked into GE’s jet-engine joint venture with France’s Safran, according to a U.S. indictment last year.

Let’s not forget Huawei. After years of speculation, the U.S. in January charged the Chinese telecommunications giant with stealing robotic technology from T-Mobile and offering bonuses to employees for successfully stealing IP. A Silicon Valley startup last year alleged that Huawei had planned to steal its digital-storage IP.

All this isn’t a matter just for prosecutors and diplomats. In 2017, the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property said U.S. companies alone lost up to $600 billion from theft, counterfeiting and piracy. More than 25 major global companies have been affected by Chinese IP infringements in the last five years, by Shelton Capital Management’s count.

Some companies like AMSC have been “nearly destroyed,” with almost 700 jobs lost, U.S. prosecutors said, or roughly three of every four employees who worked at AMSC in 2011. Based on current trends, China’s state railway could hollow out Siemens and Alstom (Siemens is separately also a victim of hacking). Investment managers these days routinely quiz companies on when Chinese rivals will crop up, since that timeline could foretell a life-and-death struggle if the competition steals technology.

If companies outside China get further marginalized, at stake are exports, employment and in turn the wealth of many nations. Already, China’s drive for semiconductor IP has turned the whole economy of Taiwan, whose most important industry is semiconductors, into a battleground.

How can China be persuaded to stop? Bilateral treaties haven’t worked. The U.S. intelligence community last year accused China of violating a 2015 agreement between the two sides to halt cybertheft.

As for the WTO, it has fallen short as the arbiter of the global commercial order. Washington hasn’t historically sued Beijing for IP theft at the WTO because, some note, it would need detailed public evidence from U.S. companies—evidence those companies will shy away from providing, out of fear of Beijing’s retaliation. China joined the WTO in 2001.

The Trump Administration last year officially launched a WTO complaint against China on IP theft. But chances are low that the WTO will get anywhere. Unlike other multilateral bodies, the WTO requires the consensus of all members. The institution also lacks a formal process for kicking out a member. All this makes reform at the WTO urgent.

If the WTO fails, though, individual governments are within their rights to threaten China with tariffs, and even band together outside the WTO. With the U.S. having taken the lead, the comity of nations should step up to Chinese theft—with or without the WTO.

Andrew Manton is the lead portfolio manager for the Shelton International Select Equity strategy. Abheek Bhattacharya is a research analyst on the International Equities team.