China used their junks to sail all over the world.
China can make to spec. (ask Apple) and if you need 5,000 engineers to work on something next week - it can be done; not even India can match that yet.
China today is about where Japan was in the 1950s before they implemented rigorous quality control across all export industries. maybe some here are old enough to recall their parents cursing "cheap jap junk"??
The US was in the same situation in the mid to late 1800s. It made cheap crappy low grade wooden furniture and mostly exported to England.
Today the US is a leader in high quality turbines, industrial equipment, pharma & etc. But not in most consumer goods. Maybe Japan will continue as a maker of high-quality consumer goods, tho many Nikon lenses are now stamped made in China or Thailand.
