China's Breakthrough

China’s decisive industrial revolution, gaining speed from the late 1970s onward, resembled patterns in places like India or Brazil in many ways. For example, the nation continued to attract foreign industries because of low wages, and this in turn suggested vestiges of a colonial economy. Global firms like Nike and Apple depended heavily on this aspect of the Chinese economy. China’s robust export sector featured basic manufactured products, like clothing or kitchenware, more than the most sophisticated software—though this sector was developing rapidly by the twenty-first century. By this point China had also gained global leadership in the production of alternative energy products, from solar panels to electric cars.