The expertise and supply chains for mass scale manufacturing are in China. There are many products that can't be economically manufactured almost anywhere else.

The expertise and supply chains for mass scale manufacturing are in China. There are many products that can't be economically manufactured almost anywhere else. They graduate many high quality engineers and researchers and they spend a huge sum on R&D annually (more than many developed nations with/without PPP adjustment). They are addressing labor shortage with robots. China's R&D budget is 2nd in the world (only behind the US and ahead of the EU) when PPP adjusted: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_research_and_development_spending?wprov=sfla1 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_researc... "In the five-year plan it announced last year, the national government said China would boost its annual production of industrial robots to 100,000 by 2020. At the current rate, the country is on track to exceed that target, assuming the numbers from the statistics bureau can be trusted—not a given in China (the bureau did not respond to questions Quartz sent by email). Meanwhile, over 3,000 industrial robot makers have surfaced in the country in the past five years, according to the China Robot Industry Alliance, a trade group. China is already the world’s largest producer of industrial robots, supplying about 27% of the global market since 2015, according to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR). It’s also the largest buyer of robots. According to the IFR and Bernstein Research, China’s factories spent over $3 billion acquiring industrial robots in 2015." https://qz.com/922742/china-is-rapidly-making-robots-that-will-one-day-manufacture-everything-you-buy/ https://qz.com/922742/china-is-rapidly-making-robots-that-wi...