I knew a guy who worked for Canon copiers who actually had a Japanese guy sit in his office for 6 months to watch what he did and how he did his job so they could emulate it in their companies. Yeah, they copy us a lot.
I worked with a guy from Singapore who would always ask me how I fixed this problem or that problem and had to know EVERY little thing I did, how, why.. ARGHH!! They report back to the homeland, no matter how trivial. Industrial espionage is their business!