well, now you are talking more maturely my man. Nice one.
We build factories in China yes, but those are still british/british companies. In some ways its rather a strange WIN-WIN co-operation. Since Western/Japanese companies invest/set up/run huge factories in China for competitive reasons, China simply manufactures these western designed goods and services and exports them to the west/U.S/Japan. Its similar to vietnam in some ways, though it has more indeginious input than vietnam.
The real money is being made by our companies since this is where the high value lies, not in the low cost manufaturing china does. Reason the chinese governement is trying to move away from western designed manufactured goods in China to chinese designed and manufatured goods. Which i think is a wise decision. Since the low cost/low end manufacturing is ok/good, but not ideal for a country who wants to move up the value chain and be a global tech powerhouse, earning more bang for its buck.
So yes chinas has a huge trade surplus mainly from exporting western designed/run goods and servces with factories in China. In some way , its like our companies manufacturing their goods in china at competitive prices and simply exporting them back to us, this can happen with any developing country with good investment climate/decent infrastructure. So to be honest there is nothing special/high tech/ground breaking about that. Lol.
Since chinese exported goods are still of relatively low added value and quality, and they lack independent brands
I'm afraid to dissapoint you, but China is still behind technologically compared to the west/U.S/Japan and even S.korea.
Before you start bashing me as anti china, i will just quote from chinas own nationalistic media Global times , this is what china's own minister of commerce said/admitted, i quote:
In 2013, exports of electro-mechanical products and high-tech products accounted for 57.3 percent and 29.9 percent of the total exported goods respectively. However, the core technologies for a lot of these products are controlled by foreign companies, according to Gao.
Foreign companies in China produced 61.2 percent of China's electro-mechanical goods exported abroad and 73 percent of high-tech goods for exports, Gao said.
China becomes No.1 goods trading country - Global Times
So there you go, most of china's high tech/end production is still mainly dominated by western/japanese companies. So still a long way to go before you sart bragging.
Well, the point is, multinationals don't have countries, they have interest, just like countries. So while it's nice to call Rolls Royce British (it's seated there), if most of the jobs were Chinese, they wouldn't really add a lot of value to the British economy (just an example, RR Plc is VERY British and most of it's jobs are there). What matters to countries, and to people, are jobs and factories. So it's a lot better for a hundred Chinese companies to built in the UK, than it is for Rolls Royce to do well, or not go bankrupt. If Chinese companies support more British jobs, that is.
You keep mixing X-country with X-corporation. So 'China' is behind in semiconductors (even if most of them are manufactured IN China), because the companies 'aren't Chinese'. For them not to be Chinese, the governments where those companies are seated, would have to force them to close all Chinese factories. Otherwise, it doesn't matter what flag they fly, they still produce those things in China with Chinese workers. There is no world war 3 scenario where they would all just pull back, and China couldn't manufacture them anymore.
Besides, even if just for bragging rights, 'China' will catch up there as well. Whether through state owned companies or private enterprise, there will be 'Chinese' high tech electronics soon.
Anyway, the world is globalizing. Nobody is pure anymore. Everybody feeds everybody, just the way it should be. Now as soon as possible hopefully, that intertwined economic relationship will lead to multipolar political, military and cultural balances as well.
