Market forces are what got us into this. Maximizing immediate stock returns demands propping up old tech, cost accounting and offshoring and outsourcing, not investing in research or risky products.
And yet when you look at the results here, it's not market forces, it's government policy that has at least aided other manufacturing centers rise.
Things starting from the free or extremely cheap shipping given to Chinese companies (not by the Chinese government, by the US and others through international mail service agreements). The environmental regulations (even where they clearly cause gas power plants in developed world to shut down to be replaced by coal power plants in China/Indonesia).
Besides I keep hearing that the Chinese state funds exactly one kind of research: sending "favorite sons" to study abroad. Internal Chinese research ... it exists, and it's growing, but it's far from the research effort spent in the US or Europe. And yes, especially in Europe research funding is slinking and this does make it look like the opposite is true, but if you look into it, it doesn't appear true.
People keep claiming that China is making plans on a very long time horizon, and yet every Chinese I meet is utterly convinced of the opposite. They claim the Chinese state is a broken, corrupt, massively fractured and tenuously held together monster that has NO plans that go out even a few years. In theory, they have 5 year plans, but they don't follow through on them, so not really.
