The only reason they could is because you have anti-American administration who cares more about being able to buy islands for themselves and not teaching children useful skills.
And they stole a crap load of our technology to catch up. Look
.Chinese engineering is NOT second rate..but we let them steal this stuff to catch up. We need to do a better job of locking the front door. We can compete with them and best them in such a race...we got our secret South African weapon Elon 😀