[andrewmb]

The thing to understand about China is that domestic alternatives to international products, especially in 'sensitive' industries (basically anything technologically significant) is ALREADY a core government goal and a major cornerstone of their tech, IP, and political policy. The CCP has stated on many occasions--going back years--that their goal is to eliminate any reliance on non-Chinese firms. This has more urgency in some industries (eg semiconductors) than others, but the ultimate goal is the same.

[silexia]

The other thing to understand though is that in a dictatorship people do not have economic freedom or the incentives to truly do the hard work necessary to build this industries. If the United States cuts off support for China and these industries, China will fall far behind unless it can steal the technologies. This is the fate of most dictatorships.

[NotSammyHagar]

That seems incredibly naive. of course they do have the incentives, wanting to get rich. They do have the economic freedom, at least enough to do very creative software and hardware engineering. The evidence is there.

[thaumasiotes]

> in a dictatorship people do not have economic freedom or the incentives to truly do the hard work necessary to build this industries.

At the end of the Ming dynasty, there was a commercial family dominating the sea trade out of the southern coast. When the Qing took power, they told the family patriarch he could keep everything, as long as he was willing to swear loyalty to the new dynasty. He immediately did so.

His son, however, issued a rousing formal denunciation of his father, questioning how anyone whose oath to the Ming had been sincere could betray them at the drop of a hat like that. It was so persuasive that it convinced the Manchus, who threw the patriarch in prison -- devolving control of the whole enterprise onto the Ming-loyalist son. He went into open rebellion, took his hundreds of ships and thousands of seamen to Taiwan, and waged war on the Qing for decades. His rebellion was only ended when the Qing took the dramatic step of fully evacuating the coastline to prevent anyone from supporting him from the mainland.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koxinga

Dictatorships allow quite a bit of freedom.

[chaostheory]

They have the incentive. Despite having a totalitarian gov, the economy is still largely capitalistic. The issue is that environments which lack freedom of expression also tend to lack the creativity needed for great leaps of innovation.

If I were to guess, a large percentage of China’s captains of industry spent a decent amount of time living abroad