[seanmcdirmid]

> Robotics has catapulted Beijing into a dominant position in many industries

It is really weird that this could have been Japan in the 90s, but the rise of cheap labor in China put a stop to Japan's dominance and they somehow didn't get back into it when Chinese labor became more expensive.

Maybe its just bad luck that the tech in the 90s wasn't compelling enough while it is in the 2020s. But Japan was going through the same demographic shift in the 90s that China is going through today, they began to act but the world decided to do things in China instead...and then...its not really clear to me why Japan is not investing as aggressively now (unless they are broke, or the capability to do such investments is gone?).

[a_vanderbilt]

The US congress is partially to blame. They saw Japan's rising influence in the digital/industrial space and threatened them with sanctions. See https://news.cgtn.com/news/2019-07-11/Lessons-from-U-S-Japan... for Chinese state media's interpretation.