Is the West falling behind in science?

It's strange how the article jumps from "China is publishing more/better predominantly from industry" to "The US needs more federal science funding for academics".

My anecdotal belief is that China is doing well relatively in applied science _because_ it's companies which are doing the _research_. This provides a long-term focus, and access to resources not easily available to academic researchers. It also dramatically reduces significant overheads of the academic system like grant writing or constantly vetting and courting grad students to work with you.

Further, again anecdotally, I get the sense that most R&D in western corporations is much more _development_ than research. The research is very much done by academics with government funding. This has alignment and efficiency problems.

Nothing that can't be solved by banning the competition!

We need more merit, excellence, and intelligence.

We need less discrimination, exclusion, and intolerance.

This is a fairly anodyne position (it certainly is in China). I'm going to assume detractors are acting in bad faith (because they are) when they don't explain why and directly address the point. They just react like dogs, stumbling to regurgitate their brain dead ad hominens in an attempt to discredit the mainstream position because they don't have an answer.