Wadwha is not denigrating China's potential or the top 1% of their engineers (like those hired by Baidu). His point is that the average BS in engineering from China is significantly inferior to the average BS in engineering from a developed country. This has been widely reported by others, and it reflects and presages continuing problems inherent in the ability of China's central planning approach (quantity >> quality) in building a future economy that can compete after its wage advantages fade and its (real) GDP slows to resemble that of other mature / developed economies.

The article's main point is valid. When you automate manufacturing, you no longer compete on wages. Advantage devolves to cost of raw materials, power, and transportation. No single nation can win that game, not even if China's ruling party spends a trillion yuan building out their infrastructure. An automated factory can be built anywhere and operated there at the same cost as anywhere else. The final remaining advantage then is location. Thus future manufacturing will migrate and become increasingly local, placed as close to the consumer as possible. Inevitably, any attempt to evolve China's manufacturing by employing automation is destined to end in the same commodification that automation always produces.