It's just straight up low expectations and underestimation derived from racism in the assumption that Americans are smarter and more capable, and Chinese are only good for copying designs and making things we come up with. The idea that they can't do that like we can is pervasive.
It’s absolutely fascinating and mystifying (and dismaying) to see educated and otherwise smart people in engineering in the US hold an opinion that two countries with over a billion people each can’t accomplish anything in engineering or science without “us”.
Despite ample and repeated evidence that they can and, in China’s case, that they’re the best in the world in several areas of manufacturing.
