It's not a surprise or secret anymore that china is super leading in not only the production of raw materials into finished goods & services but almost in everything also.
This is mostly because of the effort and determination they are putting in what ever they are doing to achieve a tangible result.
A child of 7-8years have start working in the production and manufacturing sector which makes them to be super expert when they grow up.
So with this big mentality of china's I don't see them dropping down soon as one of the best country's so far in everything if they aren't the number one.
The betterment of overall economy, came from suffering of the public for a while. I am sure there are still some people who are suffering as well, but not as much as they used to. For the past 50 years, they realized production is the number one thing they can do, hell they had literal man made famine that caused tens of millions of people dead, to make sure they can have production at high level.
This is the nation that caused millions to die, just so they could give their production products and get other products and improve. This is how they got better and better, sweatshops with kids in it, low paid factory jobs where they had nets to prevent people from killing themselves. Life was HARD, but you know what? They did manage to flip that thanks to this, if they didn't do that, they would be worse now, but they did, it was horrible, but they did, and now they are doing much better thanks to all these.