Midea/GMCC, Gree spend ~5% of revenue on R&D like rest of industry, except they're larger vs JP companies (multiple size of related JP conglomerates & magnitudes larger than JP niche thermal management companies). Also more directly focused on thermal management/hvac (i.e. Gree doesn't have defense/space like Mitsubishi to split R&D). Then factor in PRC PPP, PRC simply spending magnitudes more on R&D and will continue to (involute vs domestic competition). Hence most of the tier1 western suppliers are now using white labelled / rebadged components (compressors etc) that are designed by PRC manufactures.
PRC just doing innovating AND value engineering - they have both. IMO with respect to energy efficiency tech is one of those "any idiot can build a bridge that stands, but it takes an engineer to build a bridge that barely stands". The primary metric for "quality" of energy transition products is efficiency / $, and in that JP fails hard. Only PRC is scaling efficiency / $ effectively, which has much greater value than JP trying to push top end, because frankly that's all they can do. Which has it's economic rational, i.e. TOC in wealthy countries where installation/labour expensive, but its still net, lower "quality" innovation because $ spend on JP premium nets less aggregate efficiency.