[zcrar70]

Good article, but all problem description, no solutions.

That's true of this article, and often of Economist articles generally; this isn't necessarily a negative though, because it provided an enlightening insight into circumstances that weren't necessarily obvious beforehand (to me anyway.)

I'd like to understand what drove the Japanese and American industries to turn around, and how much of that is applicable to China.

I get the impression that the business models of America, Japan and China are quite different; I don't think the US or Japan started out like China and then changed, on the contrary I think they set out in different circumstances and therefore with different aims.

I get the impression China is attempting to compete almost solely on cost, which wasn't the case of the US (innovation) or Japan (a combination of cost/quality and innovation.)

[chaostheory]

China may be very different from Japan in terms of culture and industrial history, but I'm not so sure China's current industrial evolution is that different from the US.

If you read books about the US's industrial revolution (both modern ones and ones written during the era), I'm sure you can find a lot of parallels with modern China (even with issues such as IP - Charles Dickens was angry seeing bootleg copies of his books in the US)