we like to simplify things for the ease of understanding. I wish everything can be attributed to one factor, the world would be so simple and easy to understand.

That said, I do have my own understanding on what has contributed to China's rise, and I agree, the engineer aspect has a big play in it: I read the Lean Startup book, while I was reading it, I realize that a lot happened in the country share similarity to startups. Chinese government is very flexible, they do A/B testing with economic policies, pivoting all the time, the measurement, it is so interesting to see how concepts are very similar in both governing and running a startup.