So, this was true once:
The Chinese learned a lot from Western Joint Ventures, and I remember talking to a consultant back in the early 2000’s about tech transfer. He said it was very clear: you got into the Chinese market and/or used their lower cost production and what they got in exchange was tech transfer. This isn’t some evil conspiracy, back in the 80s when the US fell behind on cars they basically forced Japanese car companies to set up factories in the US, and yeah, there was transfer of knowledge to American companies.
Now, for the West, what Western companies and the West in general got in return for their tech was not worth the cost: it was stupid and short-sighted, but companies were lining up to do it and economists and business gurus and politicians in the West were for it: the only thing that mattered was making more short to mid-term profits and all sorts of nonsense about it not mattering where goods were produced was espoused by very important intellectuals and officials. There was no attention to the long term cost in terms of loss of technological lead and moving the industrial base to China. I know: I was one of the voices warning, publicly, to stop taking short term profits by selling China our future.
But at this point it’s no longer accurate. Chinese car companies are more advanced than Tesla: they have better batteries, better HUDS, better auto-pilots and they also have faster product cycles.
Again, in most fields the Chinese are now more advanced than the West: the remains are important but in a minority—things like lithography and aerospace, but they’ll catch up in both in time and for Aerospace I’d already buy a jet-liner from China before Boeing, and Boeing’s problems have nothing to do with China. Airbus is still clearly better, but it won’t be in twenty years, and possibly not even in ten.
The West was 100% complicit in the “China Cycle”, but that cycle is almost entirely over and China is now just straight up more advanced and out-competing us.
The West made this choice. We could have maintained our tech lead for another fifty years or so if we wanted to and followed the necessary policies. We didn’t, and to expect China to not use the same methods every other major country used to industrialize is insane. Every accusation made in the “China Cycle” is something the US did to Britain back in the 19th century.
Perhaps China could have industrialized without it being disastrous for the West, but not under any sort of laissez-faire or neoliberal international trade regime.
If you’re young, learn Mandarin. Maybe even if you’re not young.