> Right now the PRC is looking like the adult in the room
Only if you ignore history.
Didn't the PRC violate every known labor/enviromnetal/human-rights standard to become the top in manufacturing?
https://matthewekahn.substack.com/p/what-role-did-regulation...
The US did the same thing. Environmentalist and workers rights movements date back to the 19th century. China's position on this is that the western nations that already developed are trying to pull the ladder they used up and wag a finger with false morality with the intent of maintaining global hegemony.
> The US did the same thing.
Except that there were no global standards at the time. You can't point to any single country and say they were doing worse. They all were bad.
But China actively flouted established international norms. Now that is behind in AI it is clamoring for controls for others.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3692695
> are trying to pull the ladder they used up
Every country spies and steals but it is the scale we are talking about. China does it at a scale that dwarfs any historical or current comparisons.
China doesn't have any grounds here when they turn around and complain about India copying its playbook:
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/renewables/chi...
> Except that there were no global standards at the time
England had a patent system from the mid 15th Century which emigrants to the New World brazenly ignored in order to set up their own industry.
Of course, they then pulled the ladder up behind themselves in 1790 with the establishment of their own patent system...