A lot of technologies are stored away in some labs or kept out due to noone using them
Elon is great on taking these "old" technologies who noone wanted to pour money into commercialising, then brand it (marketing) then with that branding attract worldclass talent and then pouring money into these businesses as long as it needed. It also helps that he is engineer and he was even leading the engineering when they were designing the first Falcon rocket.
And he still kept the "Chief Engineer" title on SpaceX. AFAIK he is very involved on designing the Starship program.
Now find me a Chinese billionaire who is actively working for China and trying to break western "chokeholds" on various industries...
They are hoarding billions and dont move a finger to help China achieve its goals
Elon threw millions and millions into SpaceX with slim chances of succeeding (he said that he thought he had 10% chance of succeeding).
So where all these Chinese billionaires throwing money into IC, Aircraft, Brain Interface Devices (?) etc ?
They are all sitting at their thumbs and waiting for the Gov to throw some subsidies, make some half-hearted effort and then pocket the money
The Chinese Gov has been begging for domestic IC tech development for decades. Where were all these "very patriotic" billionaires while China needed IC tech
Xi should slap them a lot more in order to get some interest back on the behalf of the people
This is because China doesn't (still not really) use the private enterprise kind of model for many of those technical fields. The government in China with public institutions and academic organisations do those things like IC, aircraft, space etc. Only recently have they started considering allowing private enterprise and introducing different incentive mechanisms in. In the past, there wasn't enough capital and consumer power to motivate and move. You are only appreciating single dimensions of this question when you talk about the layered question.
Chinese billionaires haven't in the past been involved in Chinese tech projects quite as much as someone like Elon Musk. There are many reasons for this. This is already untrue now as plenty of Chinese billionaires have been partially responsible for creating everything from the dozens of consumer brands Chinese (and many Asian) peoples will know to IC enterprises. Maybe the government has been responsible for the vast majority of the progress and achievements but that's slowly changing as China builds a consumer market that's increasingly looking inwards and finally has enough capital to "risk". You can't ask a poor man to gamble 10% of his net worth on pet projects with 10% expected success right? But you can expect a rich man to gamble 10% because 90% for the poor man is enough for him to live out the next year maybe while the 90% for the rich man means he'll need to slow down on buying mansions in Monaco. You see the nominal difference behind those same numbers?
China also has a very different sort of internal politics when it comes to billionaire and capitalist class compared to the US. This has obviously got
some influence on how this class shapes society and participates in the science and tech field but it doesn't necessarily hamper it like westerners sometimes believe dogmatically. Capitalism actually isn't absolutely necessary for innovation and progress even though it is often quite conducive to in early stages. Eventually it becomes rotten. A better long term solution to the incentive model
could involve alternative approaches that may not shine so bright initially but eventually take you to higher peaks.
So basically you're wrong that Chinese billionaires aren't involved. Not all Chinese tech businesses are state run. There are even private space businesses starting up that are no less impressive than how SpaceX started out. China just runs a different model. The state sometimes might step in to hold you up at different stages compared to how it works in the US. Even if none of that were true, it isn't even absolutely necessary to have billionaires lead anything for space or any other field for that matter. The US was always ahead of China in space. It's not because of Elon Musk.
So taking that logic a step further, it's like saying well US landed on Mars in the 1970s (iirc) which is 50 years before China. Well China in the 1970s could barely produce a washing machine if even that... probably much less capable. You can't measure dynamic things with snapshot comparisons. Starts should be accounted for, rates of progress etc. At one point in history the US was a nothing power compared to any major European nation. At some point, England/France/Germany weren't nations when China had mathematics textbooks explaining linear algebra (the equivalent in a different mathematical language), building calibrated mechanical astronomical clocks, making crossbows and using gunpowder.
The more lucid comparison would be to measure how long it took (and how much money it spent) going from first satellite launched to first space walk or first human in space to first rover landing on another planet etc. Then recalibrate with considerations for desire to perform a certain task, political influence/backing etc etc. Did billionaires directly make Apollo missions deliver those successes? Did they invest to build the Saturn V? Did they build China's HSR network? It's simply not a question of "are my billionaires doing me proud" even though it often
is like that, it's simply not a necessity when there are so many other elements involved and can access their share of funding and incentives.
What you're doing in your judgement of China's billionaires and its incentive structures now is basically like judging the cultural revolution during its worst phase and expecting immediate results like it has to turn China into the perfect utopia with abundant wealth pretty much overnight as opposed to understanding it inherited a deeply wrong system with deeply ingrained social problems that would need to take many generation to
begin correcting and setting a path. Likewise, if China's state run space operations have the same funding and access to international talents like the US and SpaceX has, it may even do better than SpaceX has been doing, under an state run authoritarian program. Who knows. If anything, that's exactly how it is like since China's programs have a fraction of the funding (until CPC see even more promise and results than already given) and not near the same level of industrial experience in this field compared to US. Yet it is achieving well beyond under equal measure.
