When it comes to light manufacturing, sure, but they’ve struggled to just get to a point where they can do sophisticated heavy manufacturing at any kind of quality and this has been the result of US policy helping them out here. It wasn’t until Trump that this process ended and it became policy to not allow China to build a competitive heavy manufacturing industry. We will see if they pull through and become a rival in that regard as well; but I’m betting that now we’ve cut off their military from our tech and are pushing our companies out of China that they stagnate.
Their “miracle” was a US creation, a policy to build them up to create a counterbalance to Russia. It’s gonna take ten years to tell, but China is already feeling these effects and feeling them hard.
This was situation 10+ years ago. PRC's been phasing out low value add light industry for years. US export controls tried to limit PRC modernization even pre-Trump (see 5axis CNC bans, trying to cripple PRC compute under Obama). US didn't help - they were outplayed despite efforts to contain PRC progress. Yet PRC inidgenous heavy industries now basically competitive in nearly every sector hence trade wars since PRC indigenous efforts are increasingly displacing western products. Exception being aerospace and semi both of which are closable gaps. Everywhere else PRC has more or less caught up. By most metrics, PRC's already pulled through and still rapidly climbing up value chain, innovation indexes etc. The "effects" is PRC increasingly entrenched in supply chains everywhere, including friendshore destinations that's basically reassembling PRC components - see PRC trade with said destinations increasing proportional to US imports from said countries. It's how PRC went from capturing $8 in assembling fees from each iphone 3G to 25% of value add since iPhoneX. Or how PRC become largest car exporter.
That linked comment is also cherry picked stupid. PRC exports to US/west near record levels, WHILE exports to global south has officially surpassed western bloc, i.e. PRC is MORE factory of the world than at any point in the past. The drop in exports is due recent to global economic downturn that saps demand everywhere, but it's sapping from hilariously record high exports during covid. Meanwhile PRC export:GDP is like 20% down from 35% high in 00s, i.e. it's one of the less export dependant major economies in the world responsible for substantial global exports (including heavy industry) but it's not even an export driven economy anymore.
On demographic front, the reality is PRC is minting OECD combined in skilled talent every year and last 5 years of PRC topping citation (controlled for quality), innovation index is just lag affect of PRC growing with fraction of that talent. The PRC miracle is basically doing all that with ~20% skilled workforce, because at PRC scale that's enough to be globally competitive. Now it's in process to grow that competitive workforce to 50-70% skilled in next 30 years, which is adding anohter couple US worth of talent into the mix.
This comment gives a better perspective https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=36247499&goto=threads%...
Their “miracle” was a US creation, a policy to build them up to create a counterbalance to Russia. It’s gonna take ten years to tell, but China is already feeling these effects and feeling them hard.