I generally think both attitudes are a too simplistic look.
Basically, the most common pattern with „commodity“ tech seems to be like this.
Western companies go ahead and expend a lot of R&D to establish a new market or validate a market need. Chinese companies go ahead and flood the market with slighly worse but significantly cheaper versions of said product (often forcing the „inventor“ company to take a significant margin hit, reducing new R&D budgets).
Chinese companies them spend R&D on iterating on new features of the product (which they also can, because they saved a lot of R&D on the first product iteration).
„Western“ companies mostly created the situation for themselves. They basically consolidated all their manufacturing in China. China has also invested tremendous amounts into education and qualification. So China effectively turned from „the workbench of the world“ into a country where companies have extensive knowledge in product design, development, testing and manufacturing - as well as a mostly local supply chain.
Western politicians did it to us. China was allowed into the WTO but never held to any of the rules.
It is still treated with kid gloves by governments as if it were a developing country despite the fact that it hasn't needed such treatment for decades.
That’s an over simplified view of the world that completely ignores all the benefits of outsourcing our manufacturing to China brought. It may have been short sighted of us, and we may have over valued those short term benefits, over the long term costs, but it wasn’t a decision made by some shadowy group of “politicians”. It was a collective societal decision, to choose easy consumerism, cheap products, and rapid growth in quality of life, over the long term viability of societies.
But this story hasn’t ended yet, and China certainly isn’t treated like a developing country. It’s treated like a country that has a vice grip on our economic nether regions, and we really don’t want to make any sudden unexpected moves.
Those benefits were chiefly lower prices for the manufactured goods. But the Federal Reserve interpreted this as a problem per their mandate to keep CPI going upwards, and created a bunch of new money that went into asset bubbles. So the "benefits" to the average person also included housing unaffordability and the general financialization of everything. Viewed through this lens, it does not seem like any sort of collective societal decision.
No, as someone in the western side of product development things. The problem is studied in the standard MBA course for Strategy, without even China mentioned.
First-mover advantage, which comes from R&D into new markets is short lived no matter what. It is critical for firms that hit new ground to find ways to continue to grow their position and market as soon as they can. Copy-cat firms always always come, even big western megacorps love to come in and push out the little western corps, this is typically what is taught in said MBA class. Depending on the market, making newer products that are cheaper is absolutely something a firm must evaluate if there is a demand for it that can be a position and a threat to them.
It's simply the song and dance of the business lifecycle. It's one of the many reasons why 90% of startups fail.
iRobot hasn't got that excuse. They had market dominance and high margins for long enough that, had they retained focus, they could've created follow up products that would've made for durable, defensible market leadership, even if not every product was a success. I hope everyone is clear that that's the world we live in now <cough>Model Y</cough>.
DJI as consumer and professional drones seems like they‘re most certainly they are also an R&D leader given the fact that there are essentially 0 western competitors.
When it comes to more commodity tech, batteries immediately come to mind. Chins has spent years funding battery research and they are now the biggest supplier for LiIon batteries of basically all kinds. Solar panels seem like another example.
Every category I can think of where China is near-first there is some international manufacturer that has a better product.
Several areas where there are much higher volumes or outstandingly better value though. Things like automotive lidar, construction assemblys (like double glazed window units), consumer electronics like quadcopters.
I recently bought a handheld spectrophotometer for work (color assessment). The product from the leading US company (X-Rite) is ~US$15k in my market. I bought the Chinese equivalent for US$3k. Maybe if I needed guaranteed nine 9s of colour accuracy the US product would be worth it, but for 95% of users in the market, the Chinese product is more than fine.
I have a vague theory that China's massive home market of poorer people keeps the innovation going. There's always an upside for making something 1% cheaper and simpler as more people can buy it.
That gets mocked by rich people in rich countries in the short term but then leads to disruptive innovation from below, cheaper, simpler items growing and eating the market.
I think you are on to something. In the US I feel the focus is more and more on catering to the maybe top 20% who can afford to pay a lot more for things. There are less and less low end cars. Concerts and sports events are super expensive. New apartments are usually in the higher price range. No starter homes anymore. Instead of innovating, we just increase the price of assets.
BEVs most certainly aren‘t. Chinese EVs are strongly competing on price. Based on my own experience with them (n=4). They are very good as a EV, solid as a rolling smartphone, but not leading as being a car. Given the choice, I still would prefer a BMW EV any day.
However, batteries as a commodity are a good example where china is leading as volume and R&D leader
They are more than capable. I have just looked at what BMW, Mercedes and Audi have on offer. Then compare what Zeekr and Xpeng has on offer (7X, G9). Quality wise they feel the same or even better.
While I agree as a "complete car" the full package might not quite be there yet. But that is from a European perspective as they mostly are focused on their home markets. But this is changing. This is then simply iterating for product/market fit.
Personally I find the major problems in chinese cars are the software. That is the easy fix and they are getting closer with each iteration.
So much that today I would choose a Zeekr 7X but choose to postpone as the software was too annoying (adaptive cruise control, lane assist, sign recognition, auto brake, audio cues).
The big loss we have with EVs are servicability. But that is a universal problem with all automakers.
I don‘t care all that much about cars, my n is soley based on the cars i got provided for business trips. One Xpeng (no clue which) was among thise vehicles.
The main problem I see (beyond my i4 just being significantly nicer to drive) is replacement parts. The chinese EV companies are replacement parts and a qualified repair network. Replacement part availability is rather bad across the board, which has a number of cascade effects, but primarily higher insurance premiums. To add, there is also the fact that it looks like the EV market in china will consolidate not too far in the future, most likely compromising long term maintainability.
Basically, the most common pattern with „commodity“ tech seems to be like this.
Western companies go ahead and expend a lot of R&D to establish a new market or validate a market need. Chinese companies go ahead and flood the market with slighly worse but significantly cheaper versions of said product (often forcing the „inventor“ company to take a significant margin hit, reducing new R&D budgets). Chinese companies them spend R&D on iterating on new features of the product (which they also can, because they saved a lot of R&D on the first product iteration).
„Western“ companies mostly created the situation for themselves. They basically consolidated all their manufacturing in China. China has also invested tremendous amounts into education and qualification. So China effectively turned from „the workbench of the world“ into a country where companies have extensive knowledge in product design, development, testing and manufacturing - as well as a mostly local supply chain.