Uh, I'm not sure exactly what you're disagreeing with. I think intelligence is a thing, I think tests can probably reflect it at least a bit, and I think the fact that wealth is not really correlated with it means that there are probably a lot of dummies making capital allocation decisions.
> immigrant-founded or run companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Tesla
I'm talking about ownership and capital allocation, so the management of any particular firm is somewhat irrelevant. The immigrant founders of Google, for instance, only hold 14% stake in Alphabet. Much of the ownership is by these "favored failsons" as you put it, even if they aren't the managers. That's not even getting into the fact that the vast-majority of America's economy is not these popular-to-talk-about tech companies or that Google's have to run-the-gambit of getting green-lighted by "failsons" just to have a chance of being funded.
We could have a whole separate conversation about the effectiveness of China's bureaucracy, but all I'll say is that - even if they have the same problems, ours have had more time to solidify, and China's wealth Gini coefficient is smaller than ours, so the problems would be less magnified.
The World Bank's data is a bit spotty, but it looks like China's Gini is roughly similar to the US's at around 40 whereas other economic powers like Japan, Germany, South Korea and France are bunched closer to 30.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI?locations=C...
If your theory of is based on China having less wealth inequality than the US, you really should also look at countries with much less wealth inequality than either.
This is a common sleight-of-hand - you're giving me income Gini coefficient and describing it as if it is wealth gini coefficient. Check out the wealth gini here [0] to see that Germany and the US are much higher and China is more comparable with France.
> If your theory of is based on China having less wealth inequality than the US, you really should also look at countries with much less wealth inequality than either.
Also to be clear, my "theory" is not based on China having less wealth inequality. My "theory" is that the people making large capital allocation decisions in China are typically smarter.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_eq...
In that case the wealth Gini should be high so that the smart people get to control all the money.
Also, that's not necessarily true - I think it is better to have investment controlled by a diversified group of smart people, which would mean not a super-duper high gini coeff.