I challenge your position. I've encountered many teachers here in the west who believed cracking was OK until they found otherwise.

@Joshua Well that's the point. In "west" they found out otherwise. Enough found out otherwise, so that they usually don't attempt cracking. Guys at OP's school didn't. They won't until certain circumstances are met. Until they are met, there's nothing for OP to actually do.

"and at the same time, the political situation in changes to a point where Wolfram can start negotiations on licensing" - while it's an option, this condition can even be dropped and the "plan" is still successful. At least releated to software such as Windows and MS Office, there is a common rumour that Microsoft knowingly tolerates/accepts all the unlicensed copies in private and educational use in some countries because such a user base guarantees widespread use of the same software in the industry - and MS may have better chances getting their license fees from international companies.

"Mathematica isn't new and it's not going to disappear because you aren't paying for it." -- While this may be true for each individual, it can't be true for all individuals. I've seen plenty of good softwares die because that market decided they couldn't/wouldn't pay and they didn't have the money to advertise it or negotiate in the ways you describe. Additionally, software that is cheap or free is regularly perceived to be second-class. So, to make that software attractive, some deliberately make it expensive, which then makes it a target for people to copy and/or crack.

"Mathematica isn't new and it's not going to disappear because you aren't paying for it." is the Tragedy of the Commons, isn't it?

The political situation in China is changing as we speak, towards better recognition of intellectual property rights. The OP is part of this change. The lecturer is out of date and should be told so.

So your advice is to do something illegal based solely on an oral order from the teacher which he could later deny giving?

@Dmitry Grigoryev The premise of the question, in my opinion, extremely clearly shows that it is not sufficiently illegal for the issue to be a problem. If it were sufficiently illegal, there would have been enough people sharing your opinion in the classroom to actually stop the practice immediately. In light of that, my answer would be yes.

@Stig Hemmer Well it's up to OP to decide is he wants to attend course called Numerical and Computational Methods Based on Mathematica or if he wants to try to turn it into Anti-Software-Piracy Revolution Based on Mathematica. I also don't want to make a moral judgement on which is better or worse. If the time is right, the second option I mentioned could be a start of a promising career as a software license enforcer.

+1, this is the only realistic answer here. In the West, pirating is illegal and morally undesirable. In other places, it may be a law, but it is not enforced and it is not morally wrong, indeed it is sometimes seen as morally superior. If one single person in that culture decides to not do it, that person can decide so for themselves (and live with the consequences) but will not be able to change the mind of everybody else involved.

@DmitryGrigoryev Is it illegal to use pirated software in China? Not all countries signs-up to all international agreements... Laws may differ - or not exist... Laws may not be enforced... For example, some countries explicitly allows people to make back-ups of the physical media (CD-ROM, DVD, tape) of software, music and movies they've bought - these laws establishes users/buyers rights, and trumps any explicit or implicit license-agreement.

Just going to take issue with/clarify one point: "[Mathematica] want... more money than they invested into the creation of software" This is a rather incomplete picture -- there are multitudinous ongoing marginal costs for Mathematica beyond initial release of the program, especially support personnel, maintenance staff, developers of new versions, etc. It's not exactly the case that software is the type of IP that, once created, can just milk its market power for money on zero marginal costs ad infinitum. Part of the license fee goes towards continuing costs and future investment.

-1 : I thought of suggesting to pass the class and then report (after repercussions aren't likely to affect the grade). But then, even if that straightens up the teacher for the future, OP would still be profiting (a good grade/experience) by participating in something OP finds immoral. I cannot endorse immorality, even if excuses make it tempting by seeming "less immoral". Take a stand. Rock the boat. Or enjoy a diploma, realizing it may also cost a life of disappointment whenever thinking about how morality was sold out just for the official recognition. Nay. Be moral.

"there's nothing for OP to actually do" Being a honest person is something the OP can actually do.

@Andrea Lazzarotto I really fail to see how is usage of pirated software dishonest in any way. Note that I'm not suggesting that OP should play "dumb" and try to pretend he's using original software when he's not.

@MichaelChirico Of course, I do understand your point. I was indeed oversimplifying things with the sentence that you quoted. However, I personally don't believe that there's much to gain from going into details here. In my opinion, all of the expenses, except for support, can be just labeled as "creation of software:. In case of support, well, in general, it's not provided to pirated versions, so I don't see any problem with that. For Wolfram, in the worst case, it's the same as if the OP didn't use their software in the first place.

The fact that you fail to see how violating laws is not dishonest does not make such violations less unlawful, IMO. Luckily, at least the OP has options to use the Wolfram Language legally.

@Andrea Lazzarotto I myself see legality and honesty as two orthogonal scales, so I don't see why would something legal be honest or something illegal be dishonest. I do not dispute the "other options" argument, but the point is that OP is taking a Mathematica course, not "other options" course.

@TOOGAM I do not believe that what you're claiming is actually morally superior. In my opinion, OP simply has a different starting point in life than some other people. That starting point has some advantages and some disadvantages. Furthermore, OP will most likely have to compete with other people that have a starting set similar to his. If OP (or his teacher or his school) make economic expenditures in order to satisfy "morality", then they have expended their resources for something that is not tangible. This puts them at disadvantage compared to other people and other schools.

@TOOGAM This is also one of the reasons why I mentioned than the solution for piracy needs to come from top-down, so that it applies to others as well and doesn't put OP and his school at disadvantage when compared to other potential competitors. This might also sound a not so nice, but in my opinion, if OP has some sort of "morality bar" that needs to be filled, well there are plenty of other things that can be more moral than helping a for-profit corporation achieve its profits. Other have expanded on this subject more.

«not "other options" course» We are not talking about other mathematical software, we are talking about other ways to use it legally without a license.

@Andrea Lazzarotto I was a bit unclear there. When I mentioned the "other options", in my mind, I was thinking exactly about what you're mentioning. What I really meant, but didn't express correctly, was that I was mostly thinking about the let's call it "traditional" desktop Mathematica, compared to the cloud. Do note that I did give you a +1 for the Raspberry Pi solution, which is a good way to sidestep the whole issue.

-1 x 10000 @AndrejaKo Making live out to be just a competition on who gets farthers is the most ridicilous notion I have heard in a long time. What in the world is the point of being the most succesful person in the world if you break your own ethics to get there? Like seriously, every language I know has some kind of proverb about everybody doing something not making it right (If all your friends jumped off a bridge).Of course, when everybody does something you should give it careful consideration, but (cont.)

@AndrejaKo : You suggest that cultural differences are so significant that violating copyright may actually be perfectly moral in OP's society, because the whole concept of copyright itself is inconsequential in some societies. If that's really what is believed, then there should be no need to worry about rocking the boat. Advising people to keep things quiet (effectively sweeping things under the rug) is not the typical process for innocents who are confident that they are on the (morality) high ground. Re: "helping a for-profit" [get] "profits", stealing from the rich is still stealing.

in the end you have a user here whose ethical convictions disagree with what is being done, he asks for advice on how to approach the situation and you tell him to just **** his ethics. That's an absolutely horrible thing to do as a human being to another human being.

@DavidMulder : Somehow I doubt that academia.stackexchange.com really provides you with the permission to do a -1 downvote 10,000 times.