Bussard Ramjet
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Obviously in manufacturing, supply chain matters, that's basic knowledge. The higher the tech, the deeper is the chain, going global if it deem required (and permitted). Say Rheinmetall backing Abrams tank, and Mitsubishi in Patriot missiles. Some hi-tech were even monopolized by a single company, say T800/T1000 from Toray. Other than components, you also got capital goods in the chain like CNC, precision tooling and all sorts of foundry. And yes, on ship building you mentioned, China is go up against SK which dominated advanced LNG carriers.
When you mention foreign companies, top FDI in Mainland are from Hong Kong which accounts for an overwhelming 68% of all (almost half of commercial real estate in Beijing, greater Shanghai and Pearl River Delta invested by HK), followed by Singapore in 2nd place (Suzhou development), Taiwan in 3rd spot (electronics). What's foreign?
The data, interpretation, are from World Bank (like all Bretton Wood org, China is under-represented), according to which China is very much at the top rank, lead by far in overall scale of hi-tech (bigger than US-Japan-Germany combined). So are the patent filings data, industrial design in-force data, from WIPO (World Intellectual Property Org), China leads far ahead in overall scale.
I can understand you don't like these numbers, so what's your version on interpretation of "hi-tech", and associated data? Please share your data & analysis.
I right now have no mega data to cite. I will research and get to you later.
But the point that I raised is really about the complexity and the added value in manufactured stuff.
It is really hard to define high tech, and the definitions may vary even from people to people.
One other failure with that metric is the use of only exports. Let's take a hypothetical case, where I bring in $1 trillion of "high tech" stuff as imports, and then export it back to someone else. According to your data, I would have a $1 trillion export, which doesn't really mean much.
I think the best way to really measure high tech manufacturing is by going into various fields and then figuring out who makes what, and which companies dominate.
As I was talking about shipbuilding, the fact remains, for now atleast, that western/Korean/Japanese companies dominate the high tech areas of shipbuilding.
Firstly, Korean yards still dominate in high complexity ships.
Then, even for the ships that are made in China, many core components, like propulsion etc. are brought either from abroad, or sourced from foreign firms making in China. Almost, all Chinese ships have propulsion from Rolls Royce, Warstila, and others.
This is not to deny your manufacturing prowess, and the rapid increase in manufacturing quality and complexity.
But, it is yet to reach that comparable to say the US.
Also, no one can deny that China's manufacturing is a huge success story, an envy of the whole world, especially that of the developing ones.