As Grace Wang, founder of Shenzhen-based Luxshare (one of Apple’s new contract manufacturers), poetically expressed, “Flying with phoenixes will nurture outstanding birds.” It is another lesson that capitalist Shenzhen has taught the Communist Party: Market competition tends to lower prices and raise quality.

China mostly welcomed foreign manufacturers to train its workers. It is some sign of China’s economic openness that so much of its exports are driven by Apple and Tesla, while Japanese exports have been driven almost entirely by its own companies. After it built up a critical mass of process knowledge, however, Shenzhen became as much an innovator

American manufacturers spent the better part of three decades unwinding its stock of process knowledge when it opened so many factories in China. Every US factory closure represents a likely permanent loss of production skill and knowledge. Line workers, machinists, and product designers are thrown out of work; then their suppliers and technical ad

Mostly, though, I think the problem lies with American policymakers and executives who fail to grasp the importance of process knowledge.

view them as milestones in the training of better scientists and manufacturers. Viewing technology as people and process knowledge isn’t only more accurate; it also empowers our sense of agency to control the technologies we are producing.

The obsession with invention has clouded Silicon Valley’s ability to appreciate China’s actual strength. Rather than seeing tools and blueprints as the ultimate ends of technological progress, I believe we should

2012 story in the New York Times reported that Apple needed to hire nearly nine thousand industrial engineers in the earlier days of iPhone production. The company’s analysts expected recruitment to last nine months to hire that many engineers in the United States. In China, they were able to do it in two weeks. A large pool of good labor increases

Environmental reviews continue to delay renewable projects. In 2024, the United States had 42 megawatts of operational offshore wind production, 932 megawatts under construction, and an astounding 20,978 megawatts undergoing permitting review, most of which are waiting on environmental analyses to be completed. Meanwhile, China is building most of

When I look at the United States, I marvel both at how much it did build before 1970 as well as how little it constructed afterward. China spent 13.5 percent of its GDP on infrastructure investment in 2016, whereas the US average over the past three decades is closer to 3 percent each year. Could not the two countries just move a few percentage poi