Won't be any ball bearings and high precision on that list (like Rolls Royce Jets). China, following the disruptors playbook, took the easy and barely profitable stuff. Industry doesn't "care" when their low-margin easy stuff is picked off. It's a trap and a snare we've known about for decades and decades, but we cannot step out of the doom loop. The only way to fight it is to go against the Anti-Trust Act, and wipe out the upstarts with loss-leading market flooding.
Discussion
Exactly. Didi Chuxing used aggressive loss-leading tactics to push Uber out of the Chinese market. They burned billions in subsidies, undercut Uber’s prices, and leveraged government connections to make operations harder for Uber (e.g., regulatory roadblocks).
Once Uber bled enough cash and saw no path to profitability, they cut their losses and sold their China operations to Didi in 2016. This is a textbook example of how China lets foreign companies enter just long enough to extract their playbook and capital, then squeezes them out—all while protecting its own domestic champions from foreign competition.
The West doesn’t play by these same rules. Western economies treat competition as an open playing field, while China plays a long game with state-backed advantages and market manipulation.