China should not be singled out for attention in the Renault spy row and could be facing problems protecting its own industrial secrets, the head of Airbus said on Monday.
Tom Enders, whose aviation group has an important assembly plant in Tianjin and regards China as a critical future market for its passenger jets, said espionage cases were “a fact of life” in industry and politics and “it’s not a problem with any particular country”.
“The Chinese and others are today much more aware about the need to protect intellectual property because they see the point coming, and in some areas they may be there already, where they are generating intellectual property that needs to be protected as well,” he told the Financial Times.