There is a book titled "1434- the year a magnificent Chinese fleet sailed into Italy and ignited the renaissance". In that book, there is a considerable explanation of the winds of China - how the monsoons were influenced by the mountain cooling and plain heating to dictate the sailing calendars. The winds of China have been studied and documented for over 500 years and so modern wind farms will rest on a well studied pattern.
As an American engineer, I hate to admit that the Chinese engineers may be so far advanced over our skills. If THEY build a wind farm, they might well succeed.
The Chinese school system is not great at encouraging innovation, but they do turn out competent engineers who can build on other people's ideas. I've known some ex-pat Chinese and read writings of several others and they have said if you have a yen to innovate, it's a lot easier to leave China and prove your ideas elsewhere before returning.
Chinese quality control can also be all over the map. Their culture is sort of based on whatever you can get away with, so counterfeits are common. Alaska Airlines lost an MD-80 off Los Angeles around 2000 due to counterfeit Chinese bolts. There is an international standard for hardened steel hardware that certain marks are cast into the part to indicate to what level it's been hardened. A Chinese counterfeit company decided to use one of these markings as their company logo and cast it into all their parts. These parts then got sold internationally as the hardened parts even though they were just standard grade steel.
Testing for counterfeit electronic parts is becoming a big industry too. I worked a lot of overtime last fall on an integrated circuit counterfeit tester. (It was developed from another instrument the company I work for makes, but it required a fair bit of new software.)
Typically countries on the rise think of doing big things. When the US was coming into its own, it built a lot of skyscrapers, large dams, and finally a massive highway project followed by putting people on the moon. There is a lot of talk that the US can't do those things anymore, but US engineers still come up with the ideas. It's mostly just attitude though. If the US delayed an aircraft carrier or two or canceled a few defense contracts, the money could be spent on something that would boost the American economy. Something like high speed rail coast to coast would be a huge benefit to the economy, but few are willing to spend the money.
Here in Clark County the luddites refuse to replace the I-5 bridge into Portland. Portland and the State of Oregon are ready to write a check for their half, but the people on this side of the river keep coming up with excuses for how it's too expensive. The bridge that's there now is 100 years old and is a huge bottle neck for traffic. Portland also wanted to extend the light rail across the bridge and the Clark County ostriches had a cow insisting that it would "bring in the wrong element". Portland's light rail is heavily used and at least 80% of riders are white and middle class. Same as most of the people claiming it would bring in the wrong element.
I shake my head at people's shortsightedness. Yes, it will probably have to be a toll bridge, but for those who have to commute into Portland each day, wouldn't it be worth $1 to cut 1/2 hour off the commute? I don't have to commute, but I would pay it. Most people pay several times that a day in coffee.
Today China is the country thinking of doing big things and they're the ones building the giant dams and other big infrastructure projects. China was seriously thinking about building an orbital solar satellite a few years ago, but I think the dropping prices for terrestrial solar put that project on the back burner. The Chinese have also made noises about establishing colonies on the moon.
Some of the ideas are home grown, but a frighteningly large number are from other parts of the world where those people didn't want to do it because it was "too big".
