Just an observation, I have seen much of China.. have you? Your "definite" statements about how China treats it's people lose luster in the face of American ideals like "the tuskegee study" and the "tulsa race massacre". China is an mixed agrarian to technological society not unlike all large countries.
And the owner of low tech unreliable products.... I think not... shall I start with the Ford Pinto?
I lived in Hong Kong for most of 1996, traveled through a fair bit of the mainland then, and have posted about that experience over the years here. You're comparing America's PAST with China's present, and future. Not unlike all large countries..exceptions given for the concentration camps, imprisonment for political disagreement/speech, organ harvesting from said prisoners (without anesthetic in many cases), and thousands of other abuses that NO other large countries would tolerate, certainly not the USA.
I have friends in HK that have had family on the mainland wrongfully imprisoned and tortured for things that aren't even crimes in the USA - if these things WERE currently crimes in the USA, all of CNN, MSNB, etc, would currently either have been imprisoned, tortured, and/or executed during the last 4 years for crimes against the state. That or have had their organs harvested while they were awake.
Millions in concentration camps...today. Millions of babies killed just at the point of birth with a needle through the skull (ok, so that one is from the late 90s and early 2000s, but they still used to do it, in the current generation's living memory, not our great grandfather's). CCP is still engaging in mass forced sterilization at the very least.
Yes, China is closing the gap regarding tech, just study their naval construction of the last 15 years, not just the numbers, but the tech, as well as the adoption of US/etc methods and tactics (Search some of Mace2004's posts on China). China has used tech sold to them by Google and the other champions of human rights, to help identify and imprison hundreds of thousands of Chinese people who disagree with the CCP. Does hypocrisy start with an "h"?
The CCP are behaving as badly as the Mongols ever did, the difference being they are doing so inside their own borders, and not the rest of the known world.