It is not "inevitable" that China will lead the US in tech within 10 years

Recently, an "expert" claimed that, given the number of engineers China produces, it's inevitable that China will beat the US in this tech war within the next 10 or 20 years.

I disagree, it's only "inevitable" if the US gets sloppy.

They may have the engineers and scientists but do they have the culture of innovation that the US possesses? Innovation is where the US has an advantage.

Sometimes the CCP is successful in its planning. Just look at the EV industry where Chinese manufacturers dominate. But you can't always predict where the "next big thing" will come from. And very often, the next big innovation is the product of a small bleeding-edge start-up.

One way to measure innovation then is to look at the number of unicorns each country has. A "unicorn" is a startup valued at over $1 billion.

Measuring unicorns may be more useful than measuring the number of scientific papers published because if you can't translate those scientific papers into profit, they become relatively useless.

In 2020, the US and China had nearly equal numbers of unicorns: 233 in the US and 227 in China.

However, in just four years the number of unicorns in China has plummeted to only 168 with a total valuation of $640 billion, while the US has almost tripled to 656 unicorns with a valuation of just over $2.11 trillion. The difference is striking. What happened in those four years to give the US such an enormous lead?

Could the CCP's crackdown on the private sector have scared entrepreneurs? Or has an anti-business climate stifled innovation?

What got China to where they are is not where they are going. They are turning their backs on the very things that made them a success story.