So the party has grown more vocal in blaming one final group: women. It’s hard to be a woman in China today. Many of them did not survive the one-child policy: There are approximately forty million more Chinese men than women. Though the country

156 of its top 200 suppliers have manufacturing sites in China. Seventy-two of them are in Shenzhen’s province of Guangdong, which is as many as there are in the United States, Vietnam, and India combined.

According to Apple’s most recent supplier report (released in 2023),

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

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