Most East Asian countries have a huge advantage in labor cost. If they don’t have one now, they often did in the past during the ascent. That’s basically the de

Most East Asian countries have a huge advantage in labor cost. If they don’t have one now, they often did in the past during the ascent. That’s basically the definition of zero-sum. Yes, worker productivity increases over time, so the size of the pie grows, but how those gains are distributed is zero-sum. It’s not clear to me that growing your power, e.g. receiving more of the pie, somehow leads to you increasing productivity more later.