I don't work in manufacturing, in work for a giant popular retail company.

I swear to Christ, I have zero clue how it has survived under the gross incompetence of our leadership. I have never witnessed such stupidity in all my life.

These guys are beyond the pale. Getting mad and emotional and making stupid decisions on vibes. When their nonsense fails, they just blame it on anything but themselves and do the next dumb thing. If we didn't have stores everywhere, we would be dead. We only survive because you can't swing a dead cat without hitting one.

China still calls itself "communist with Chinese characteristics". They quite openly gave their companies strategic goals to fulfill.

It's all the dorks thinking they could get hold of that sweet big market if only they gave China enough concessions. And there it was always only for the bosses and owners to participate in the windfall, employees be damned. They were played big time and payed themselves huge bonuses in the mean time for selling us out.

That's kind of missing the forest for the trees

They have more than two times the population of the EU and US combined, and the manufacturing capacity for basically the rest of the world.

They have enough population so that whenever there's a new tech/infrastructure to spin up, they'll do it internally and then come out internationally with a finished & field-tested version of that product.

They also have more PHDs, research and patents than anywhere else in the world, integrated in their industrial ecosystem. That's like a silicon valley but for basically every field of manufature, research etc.

And to address your first paragraph: Yes, if instead of value extraction for shareholders, which is literally capitalism, we reinvested all of that cash back into the economy as subsidies, we would also be thriving. That's not a diss on China, that's a failure on the US/EU.