China, with heavy state subsidies, has also proven to be pretty effective. Interestingly, it hasn't had to embrace immigration because it has over a billion people.
Counterpoint on China - they will import special talent and help them immigrate. And of course, there are people who'll value the lifestyle of Shenzhen over San Francisco, or Shanghai over New York. One example that comes to mind is Dr. Erdal Arikan.
Most foreigners don't really want citizenship and are content being expats. The ones who do want citizenship are often from countries with weak passports, which often means weak infrastructure, poor HDIs and usually not that much of a skillset that they can bring to the table.
This story is a great example of the system taking a brilliant person, and stomping their opportunity down because they were from the wrong class. But replace class with whatever you like.
They do actually. There’s a fair bit of critique you can level at the system from a country-wide economic perspective and especially from a world-trade perspective, but they did manage to get a system in place where a central government can influence both the area and speed of innovation.
The main thing they do is stack the market to be very favourable for a given industry and then have extreme competition between the companies.
They not only encourage innovation but also cross-pollination too. So say you discovered some minor technology, they'll even help you connect with other folks who work in the space, potentially combine the innovations together to create a new final product that can actually be licensed to OEMs.
Where I find China lacking is in creativity and imagination. Yes, there are some changes in that front happening, but you'll never find OpenAI, Helion Energy or SpaceX being founded in China. Those projects won't even get the greenlight from the CCP to get started off the ground because of their high capital and startup costs.
It provided the above to a select few that thought the way they were supposed to. It also did NOT provide to a few million that didn’t think the correct way.
China, with heavy state subsidies, has also proven to be pretty effective. Interestingly, it hasn't had to embrace immigration because it has over a billion people.