This kind of blithe commentary is 20 years out of date and reminiscent of 1970s criticisms of the Japanese car industry.

I'm reminded of an Adam Savage video. He ordered an unusual vise from China, and he praised their culture where someone said "I want to build this strange vise that wont be super popular", and the boss said "cool, go do it". They built a thing that we would not build in America.

https://youtu.be/NUhrF0xkhhc?si=1WHWYZrhRmfOYO_y&t=1150 (it's about 2 minutes)

The small biz scene in unfree communist China is ironically, astronomically better than here in US, where decades of regulatory capture and misleadership have made it difficult and extremely expensive to get off the ground while being protected by the law.

gentle stroll through the aliexpress alleyway tells otherwise.

Who says America is less good at it? Hasn't the US nicked a lot of other people's ideas at some point or other?

We stole a lot of scientists and equipment from Germany after WW2. That's a big part of how we get to the moon.