No one leads in all fields, and no one lags in all areas. There are no permanent losers, and there are no permanent winners. There are only permanent competitions. China is a fierce and formidable competitor in almost all sectors.
No lol. If China was a “fierce and formidable competitor in almost all sectors”, there should be a Chinese equivalent of nearly every industrial and information firm listed in New York, but instead - it’s literally just “ooh look - Longi Solar, Xinjiang Goldwind, Huawei, SMIC, Piotech, CRRC, and CNNC.” - America is doomed, after all “startup over here is now competitive against [random tier U.S. industrial firm like Oracle]”.
China may be able to successfully commercialize its present research findings into competitive products, in due time, but that day is not today and that day won’t occur for years - simply because of the time needed for development, testing, iteration, and the same for product verticals - both upstream and downstream.
take for example, semiconductors. The ZTE Denial Order was put into place on July 18, 2018. It has now been more than 6 years since the “Sputnik” moment in China but even then, China lacks any appreciable market share in the fabless space or in equipment or in leading node foundry or in EDA, with some market share in trailing node foundry and memory (in fact, even with the ZTE denial order, Huawei entity list entry, and Oct. 7, 2022 action - China is still buying US semiconductors and wafer fab equipment hand over fist). The firms that do exist in China are small, lack scale (and will for years as construction takes time), and need to substantially improve nonfunctional requirements (reliability, serviceability, cost, scale, etc) in order to be remotely competitive anywhere they don’t have captive markets. And this is with widespread public and private support and knowledge. Nearly a decade on and China is just starting to start scaling.
Now replicate this exact same story in dozens of sectors - scientific instruments, electronic gases, speciality chemicals, medical devices, capital/infrastructure software like OS/databse/cloud, specialty software (like what Schrödinger, AutoDesk, and ANSYS), pharmaceuticals, life science consumables (assays, syringes, etc), valves, ball bearings, avionics, large commercial aircraft, oilfield equipment, laboratory test services, pesticide manufacturing, gas turbines, agtech, fintech, etc, etc, etc.
