China factory activity shrinks to six and a half year low as orders tumble

However, the question becomes which kind of product. I'm reminded of a popular "China's Got Talent"-style of show that included audience participation and voting, which the government shut down because it made them uncomfortable with the idea of regular people getting used to democracy. That's the kind of thing that chills cultural development, especially when an entrepreneur has to consider the possibility that huge sums of time and money spent on their passion could be flushed down the toilet because the communist party disapproves.

This would not be as much an issue for engineering products, and few I think dispute China's capability to innovate. I just don't believe global consumers will choose China over USA, Europe, Japan, South Korea, and so on.

Regarding manufacturing quality and the similar trajectory, you are correct. But in the 80s and onward it wasn't just electronics we were getting from Japan. Anime, jpop, ramen, sushi, all of these cultural products - which couldn't quite be emblematic of anywhere else - made Japan a soft power juggernaut.

Can China do the same? I'm not sure. Part of being cool is the ability to say "fuck the man," whoever that is and in whatever way, but dissent is too tightly managed for such an entity to be both globally enjoyed and accepted by the state, lest others start asking questions about the way things are run.

Also, I would personally never consciously buy any technology designed and built by a Chinese company because even with all of the NSA scandals in the US I still trust my information more on an Android or IOS device than a Chinese Android variant.

Other stuff of course took longer, e.g. their '70s cars weren't too hot, I got a ride in a grad student's Toyoda Corolla in the summer of 1977, but they soon started selling well, "Datsun, we are driven", my sister bought a used one in the early '80s and it was much better although still had a ways to go (and it's hard to imagine how much brand equity Nissan threw away when they re-badged in the early-mid '80s, their out of pocket costs were well over a billion in 2015 dollars).

I guess I'm saying that to those of us paying attention in the '70s, we were willing to believe Japan would get there in things like cars, and of course it didn't hurt how well they engineered and built things like the Mitsubishi Zero WWII fighter, WWII still had a big effect on people's minds in the '70s.

Hmmm, Sony was not, at least initially, one of the anointed MITI companies, Morita (and it says something that I don't have to mention his given name) had to convince the powers that be, MITI very possibly, to get the authority for $10,000 ($90K in 2015 dollars) of foreign exchange for the rights from Bell Labs to make transistors, came out with the first model in 1955: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TR-55

Then sometime in the '80s? they moved a lot of production for the US market to Mexico and my family started suffering from cold solder joints. We're rather careful about buying Sony equipment nowadays and don't buy much.