China's internal economy is sluggish and has always underperformed. They rode the wave of industrialization, but production started moving away to cheaper locales years ago. Their rising standard of living hasn't come with the increased demand that makes the US consumer market so powerful. Technological advances and demand for cheap labor will pull up all the underdeveloped countries the same way as China.

China cannot produce high technology without inputs from all over the world. NOBODY can! That's what I mean when I say that nationalism and tech are incompatible. Free trade and transparent borders make technological progress faster, arbitrary restrictions and impediments to trade impede it. The knowledge that underlies the technological advances must be spread in order to produce future technologies, so it will be spread. There is no way to hold back the process of technological advance without destroying humanity itself, and so there's no way to keep technology locked in one nation, no way to maintain an eternal advantage.