> China already has many highly “intellectual” people

Let a hundred flowers bloom, as they say.

Yes, do to their large population and slightly higher average quantitative abilities (at least if you trust their PISA scores), they have roughly 20x more 4 sigma people than America.

Chinese technological dominance seems likely even ignoring embryo selection. This will likely be amplified by better agglomeration in cities.

Were western institutions capable of thinking long-term, this would add to their desire for human enhancement.

The PISA scores they’ve done so far have been limited to Shanghai (the richest city) and then I think Zhejiang or Jiangsu (the richest provinces). It isn’t really a good sample of the entire country. I’ll be convinced when they release the scores for Henan :).

Western institutions biggest advantage is the ability to easily leverage worldwide talent, which is incidentally China’s biggest deficiency. A lot of China’s human capital, for example, has helped with the success of America’s tech industry.

Humans can be enhanced in other ways that don’t involve messing so finely with Mother Nature. We can simply develop and use better tools, for example.

I don’t agree with this. Population size has not been the driving factor for technology development historically.