As a former staffer, you are partially correct.

The issue is, most of the decisionmakers on the Hill still have an image of China that is comparable to where it was in the 1990s or 2000s.

Most decisionmakers started their careers in the 1980s to 2000s and only worked within the bubble that is the Hill, and most of their assumptions are predicated on the experiences of an American who was either in or adjacent to the academic and cultural elite of the 1990s and 2000s.

Those people with domain experience have limited incentive to work as staffers or within think tanks because they do not hire broadly, they pay horribly, and domain expertise is only developed through practical experience, which takes a decade to develop.

That is not to say this isn't an issue in other countries (even Chinese and Korean policymakers have fallen into similar traps), but most other countries also try to build an independent and formalized civil and administrative service. The American system is much more hodgepodge and hiring is opaque (eg. The nebulous "federal resume"), meaning most people hired will have went to schools where career services provide training to join government jobs (eg. Top private schools along with public universities in the DMV).

The issue in the US is a coordination issue - we have the right mixture of human, financial, and intellectual capital, but it is not being coordinated.