A lot of Chinese money just goes to zombie SOEs, but are really funding some official’s villa and foreign education for their kid. Chinese money can be just as dumb as American money. There were a ton of scammy EV companies selling basically golf carts when China first started subsidizing EV development and sales. It took around half a decade to get rid of those.

Nothing is perfect, but Chinese strategy is smarter overall. They achieve a lot with less money.

I disagree. The Chinese are just able to leverage a lot of what would have been disposable income for normal working people. In fact, this why their demographic decline is going to be especially painful.