At the end of the day the gleaming platitudes of Americanism (the stuff about fairness, equality etc) start to bump up against the reality of geopolitics. It's an unfair game, and pretending that China will eventually embrace what could colloquially be referred to as the Western approach to setting up markets like this is naive at best and dangerous at worst. It's not that your loyalty is misplaced, it's that I think you've misunderstood the game being played here.

Sure, so - what does the American approach have to recommend it? Why shouldn't I leave for China, the apparent winning team?

By all means, if that’s how you feel, you should explore that possibility.

Fairness, values, work on smaller scales. When you get to city/state/country scale, like Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, China, US do - it’s not a good strategy because your opponents/peers have no alternative but to deal with you, and unless you are going on an all out war, it’s mostly slap and tickle regardless of what you actually do.

This is a hard question, to be completely honest. Let me put it this way: I think that if the goal is maximizing the potential for accruing power and influence for your country, the Chinese system is probably better in the long run - especially in the post-post 9/11 world. The American system offers stronger fundamentals (no nasty fertility cliff in ~15 years, a strong but increasingly fractured understanding of global responsibility, a law system that still does protect political speech) but a less clear approach on how, exactly, the government is going to ensure this prosperity gravy train that we’ve been riding since the Soviet Union fell continues.

Not the parent you're responding to but the answer I see is that in the modern understanding of geopolitics (like 19th century and onwards), "fairness" and "values" aren't considerations at all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik

This is an active topic of discussion actually. In general the trinity of qualities that result in a "strong in the real way" country have been approached as realism, nationalism, and liberty. The scholarly community is currently in conflict because in the modern era one of these things is seemingly very unimportant compared to the others.

Previously, it was believed that liberty contributed to economic output for a myriad of reasons that boil down to "free markets". There's an emerging, albeit more romantically framed, belief that diversity and too much liberty are actually handicaps because both can retard a government's ability to engage in realist policy while, at the same time, deminishing the homoginizing effects of nationalism which has its own independent benefits but which also acts as a lubricant for realist action. This is not to say all assumptions and observations about liberal policies have been wrong, it's more about re-assessing our understanding about the magnitude and utility of these effects.

Please point me to some of this discussion. I'm very interested, especially if it relates to technology development and the requisite supply chains involved.

As an American business owner, in my experience reality has no concern for “fairness” but is constructed by leverage and power.

As an American business owner, do you believe in the rule of law or the rule by law? Do you think any appearance of shifting to the latter would have an impact on the business environment?

If I understand your argument correctly, my response is the same, that the "of law" or "by law" has no bearing and never has.

People/organizations/governments will do what they have the leverage and power to get away with. If you, or your organization, or your government, don't/doesn't agree with the direction, then leverage and power are your means to change the situation. Those that have the power to make/change the laws, make/change laws.

if you're interested in fairness, your loyalty probably is misplaced

On the global spectrum of fairness, the US is inarguably top-tier. The US is often compared to other western nations, not because they are so different, but because they are very similar. The top 15 or so countries are all neck and neck, but there’s a big wide field behind those ones.