They were initially given the technology by Western firms wanting cheap hard drives. Thing is, for the past decade or so there have been indigenous Chinese hard drives made on machines that weren’t provided by outside sources and from designs that didn’t originate in the West. They’re no worse than Seagate’s offerings in terms of quality and longevity.
China’s main problem isn’t that they *can’t* make quality product, it’s that mostly they don’t want to through greed and corruption. Western companies have found that if they pay for and force good QC, they can get good quality product - so it’s not a matter of ‘can’t’.
Perhaps and likely so the machines they produce hard drives on now are an evolution of what they were given before.
In any case it will take more than 10 yrs to convince me they have suddenly become innovative on their own. They are far to corrupt in their business dealings as judged by how we do business (not saying we don’t engage in industrial espionage but not against China)