Absolutely, outsourcing manufacturing gave China a massive head start. But the West also outsourced decades of expertise, supply chains, and industrial know how while congratulating itself on becoming a service economy. China didn’t just inherit factories: it invested, learned, innovated, and built an industrial ecosystem. We handed them the starting line, not the finish line.

It’s worse than most realize. When I went to Guangdong 10 years ago, I expected to meet fabricators and technicians making our products, but I instead met engineers probing our customers and capabilities.

That company has since been acquired for pennies on the dollar by Google, to the surprise of no one.

And the irony is that China has moved far beyond copying Western technology. It’s now a global leader in research output, including fundamental research in materials science, chemistry, and physics. The West outsourced manufacturing, underestimated the transfer of expertise, and somehow assumed China would remain the world’s assembly line forever. That assumption aged spectacularly badly.

Which is extra ridiculous after having just gone through the same thing with (much smaller) Japan only a couple of decades prior and having domestic auto, heavy and precision machinery markets trounced.

Once they see a few dollar signs in the short term, all long term vision becomes blind.

China has 1 billion more people than the US. And they’re graduating PhDs in STEM at twice the rate.

Frankly, if you don’t expect them to surpass the US in the coming decades, you’d have to be delusional, the numbers bare it out. A billion more people.

Also, currently they have proportionally fewer elders and children. So the adults can fully focus on creating stuff rather than care.

America is not falling behind because y’all are caring too much for each other 🤣

we just put them in homes here

you’d have to be delusional

or racist. Maybe without even realizing

Liberals being secret racists!? No waaaaaay