The main thing that gives me hope is that the type of knowledge generation environment in the western world still hasn’t been acquired by dictatorial powers like China. Given the exponentially increasing technological change we’re experiencing, the knowledge transferred via the method you described will likely be surpassed and rendered obsolete relatively quickly (hopefully) and make that transferred knowledge less likely to undo the progress made towards global order and uplift.
Because China is experiencing all kinds of internal demographic and political turmoil, and they’re still much further behind than people realize, what I worry about more in the long run is decay of western education than anything externally driven. We are our own worst enemy, and we risk hollowing out what has historically been the engine of innovation for the majority of the world (I am talking primarily about the pipeline feeding people into US University systems since World War II and high level technical/tinkering environments, as I think European education seems to have lost a decent amount of innovative capability a while ago, though I know much less about it). That problem is deeper than the problem of products of that system being sold off as you describe, but related. That poses a far bigger long term risk to domestic and global prosperity than China, imo, although China is still a massive risk for at least the next decade if Xi continues his current trajectory, and the education problem is of course related to our ability to confront that.
I see two extremely important problems that need to be solved:
1. The most intelligent and competent members of the public need to be pulled from all backgrounds, colors and creeds and be rigorously evaluated purely for ability and merit regardless of all other criteria. Historically there has been bias in favor of the host nation population. Now there is bias in favor of restorative education and nepotism. While truly restorative education has merit, it cannot interfere with attempts to identify and nurture the best of the best, which is of upmost national security importance, and is important for the maintenance and improvement of the machinery which has given us so much material prosperity.
2. We need to accept that not everyone is able to handle the complexity of the world we have created and educate those who are not in that first highly selective pool of people how to be good citizens, participate in complex systems in a way that’s beneficial for all parties despite the complexity, achieve high status, and create a compact that actually rewards them for being good citizens regardless of intellectual ability. There is a very toxic aspect in the upper echelons of modern society where those not able to handle the insane complexity and competitiveness of technocracy are essentially lied to by most of our educational system to continue schooling and training indefinitely, or they are ousted from the training environment and treated like livestock. Many people then end up clinging on to large bureaucratic systems for meaning and survival, which becomes further and further out of sync with real societal needs. This is a much harder problem to solve than the first given modern organizational complexity, but people will not accept the solution to the first problem (which is inevitably unbalanced and discriminatory against those less able) unless the system as a whole is explicitly rewarding and accepting everyone for participation and giving them achievable pathways to high status.
I see that second problem as THE problem of the 21st century. If that problem is not solved, or if it is forcibly “solved” arrogantly and stupidly, I worry the world will be plunged into a level of dysfunction that makes the past 3 years look like nirvana. If that problem is solved we could find ourselves enjoying the highest levels of prosperity, meaning, belonging, and global uplift in the history of mankind in the decades to come.