It's funny how the west loves using Harry Potter to describe life and they think they are the brave main characters. Actually they are more like Draco Malfoy. A bunch of spoilt kids who are leeching of the work of their parents/ancestors. Since they are so open, maybe we should ask them what makes them even remotely as qualified as their ancestors to call the shots? Their ancestors paid with their own blood and actually manufactured stuff from scratch to achieve it.I think in their mind they portrait China or Russia as a kind of Mordor, where only Sauron is deciding everything.
They think that Xi or Putin (or any low level boss) will not accept any argument he does not like because there is not free speech, and he will feel threatened.
On the other hand, the self confident westener presidents, CEOs and managers are able to withstand criticism and new ideas.
That is the level of their delusion.
In reality is totally the opposite, typical westener leader is full of insecurities about his position, he is not able to receive new ideas that are a challenge for his owns.
The liberal democracies (that are not democracies at all) are stagnant and fanatical.
In the West, in a political environment or in a company you simply cannot express many ideas. Do it and you receive immediate censorship. People learn to shut up and just go on with the craze.
The western system is the system where you have free speech to say idiocies (like terraplanism) and absolute 0 free speech to discuss strategic and important things.
As you told, it is factual that China produces more patents, inventions and development that full West combined.
I mean you just need to go to China and see. But when a westener goes to China, instead of wonder about the trains, metro, buildigns and so on, he complains that it does not look "traditional chinese" and that is not as interest and some random poor country full of shacks close to the sea like Thailand or whatever
Even when you look at Russia a westener should wake up to the level of things they are able to develop on a perpetual stage of sanctions and isolationism against them.
Like you have germans laughing of the russians while Moscow has robot deliveries and Berlin has...?
You may hear criticism of how companies favour short term gains in favour of inflating the stock price. Actually isn't that just the western system in general? Everything is short term when you think about it. If you're not delivering results fast enough, something is wrong with you. The fact they actually believed that ghost cities nonsense shows the inability to plan long term.