It's not an anecdote about a Twitter comment. It's a nutshell version of American history.
China also has lower labor costs generally. Lots of things cost less in other countries for the same reason.
It's rare for anyone to come up with something genuinely original. We depend on education and culture and many things to develop anything. Then we argue about things like intellectual property rights because such conventions are an attempt to sort out how to make society work given that ideas are easily "stolen" and if we don't allow for some means for originators of new things to profit, we actively discourage our best and brightest from contributing to forward progress.
But this forum skews American. Most people will argue "for" the American side and "against" the Chinese for that reason alone.
I'm only pointing out the hypocrisy and silliness of arguing this as if America has some absolute moral high ground.
I follow Natives on Twitter because, according to oral family tradition, I'm a small part Cherokee. I'm pretty sure most full-blooded Natives would happily ship me back to Europe along with the rest of the whites.
I don't know the right answer going forward. I just believe that you need actual facts to find it.
The implicit assumption that China is The Bad Guy and America is The Good Guy is unlikely to yield a real solution when there is so much low hanging fruit for saying "The two nations aren't all that different."
But it seems my thoughts are likely wholly unwelcome here, as is so often the case.