Note there are no easy roads to success in general. Being born to the right family helps (a lot) , but you can sti mess up.
In addition, automating a factory process is more effective if the designers live in a society with plenty of manufacturing experience. Avoids problems like egghead designers creating the latest automated process that turns out to be a nightmare for maintenance when actually used in a high-volume manufacturing line. I'd be willing to bet big chunk of the companies in the future automated factory revolution would be Chinese companies leveraging their manufacturing experience. Once again, skipping steps = problems down the line.
It does not work for literally everyone from the country but the people I'm talking about can definitely travel on this path.