The Chinese moved up manufacturing and technology value chains quicker than any nation had ever done before. From Hua Bin at unz.com:
I have written about the western misconceptions about Chinese economy and innovation capacity. And how such confused perception of realities will eventually lead it to a disastrous confrontation with China. https://huabinoliver.substack.com/p/chinese-economy-is-growing-more-slowly
https://huabinoliver.substack.com/p/china-vs-us-gdp-comparison-and-what
As discredited frauds like Gordan Chang and Peter Zaihan continue to have an eager audience in the west, a vicious cycle of self-delusion and disinformation gets reinforced and amplified into what I call a “demeritocracy” in the west – essentially, stupidity and derangement become the norm, and one must be more stupid and crazy than the next guy to get ahead in the echo chambers in national security, economics, academia and media.
A perfect case study is how the west has mis-judged the Made in China 2025 project, a ten-year plan launched by the Chinese government in 2015 to promote innovation, enhance technological self-reliance, and move up the manufacturing value chain.
An industrial policy is not particularly remarkable in itself, as nations, even capitalist ones, do some level of central planning and develop grand strategies such as Germany’s Industry 4.0.
What is interesting is the western reactions to China’s initiative and how it reflects its poor understanding and perennial underestimation of Chinese capacity.
Two words:
Tofu Dreg