>>10928845But China isn't Communist, is it? It's something different. And it's still an open question as to whether it's possible to have a successful capitalist totalitarian state survive over the long term. Obviously in the West, all we hear is that it is not sustainable and as the middle class grows they will inevitably clamour for democracy - because democracy is working out so well here in the UK wrt Brexit ha ha.
I'm not pro-China/totalitarianism BTW, just observing that if a country can deliver high living standards to its citizens perhaps that might be enough to suppress political dissent, and not having that one thing might not make a jot of difference to scientific progress. Certainly the US seems to be pretty f-ing paranoid about the number of PhDs etc. China is producing these days, which suggests policy makers etc. are not so dismissive.
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>>10928854I'm not an expert in aerospace, but they did orbit and inhabit their own space station recently. I think it'd be a bit rich to handwave that away as not innovative. I bet they had to solve loads of problems on their own.
Apart from that, China is basically the world's workshop these days. Plenty of innovation going on there.
