Sure, but a smart Chinese researcher can move to Vancouver or Toronto very easily, so does a researcher from Bangalore or Buenos Aires or St. Petersburg, but its harder for a firm or a research lab based out of say, Shanghai or SV even, to have access to the same type of global talent. Remember China is not Asia, China only has access to 20% of population, and also isn't that migrant friendly from what I have read (could be wrong here), so I assume the rest of the world put together would have better chance of success in competing with any Chinese city or even SV. Again I base this on the premise that access to information is freely available for everyone across the world. For example a person living in, say, Argentina, has the same access to ML coursework as someone who lives just across the street from Stanford. I think its an increasingly safe assumption to make, given the direction the world is moving towards, with MOOC and OMSCS type of degrees etc.

I sincerely feel other things considered equal, access to human capital becomes a tie breaker.