How? China is actively moving up the value chain, into EVs, batteries, semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, etc. China is not abandoning industry.

> It's a political choice by our own politicians.

No, it's mostly how our economic system, how capitalism works. Production goes where production is cheap. You’ll never be able to produce goods in Germany at such low costs as in China or other third-world countries without eroding workers’ rights and thereby creating a new lower class.