Very much this. One of the best accounts of this progression I’ve read is the “AI Superpowers..” book by Kai-Fu Lee. China held the “Knock-off/cheap copycat” moniker in the 90s, 00s, and early 1Xs, but the tides are shifting in terms of the quality of goods they produced. They’ve also taken a page from American business and begun outsourcing “cheap labor” to other third-world nations, in addition to playing loan-shark to the likes of Africa… You have to hand it to the way the Chinese have gained their footing in “capitalism” since the 1980s.