The questiom should have been
How did the Chinese get to Earth?

The talented ones quickly either get out or are absorbed by the system, all of what you described is not chinese tech, either, they will get a foreigner to come and do the whole "foreign penis so large chinese penis so small" routine to him and get him to lead the way, get things going and to train some underlings, said stupid monkey is then let go. Or they will just steal the data from relevant foreign government departments.

 All foreign governments know this is what china is like. What can be done about it? They think they are the smartest people in the world, yet have no answer when you ask "have chinese people walked on the moon?" I have had conversations with people saying china is the best at everything and foreigners are stupid, all the while he is kitted out in adidas and levis while playing games on his laptop and chatting on his phone.

...some days here....

To answer your question, most likely with Russian technology.

Other things, well, I might be pretty ignorant, but for as much as I can think, there's nothing created here that has been either really technologically advanced compared to the available technology worldwide, nor imported technology that have been bettered to a significant level.

I'd be happy if someone can prove me wrong, I'd learn something new then.

You know, it doesn't take much advanced technology to get into orbit.  Apple's latest smartwatch has more processing power than the Saturn and Apollo vessels that took America's astronauts up to the moon.  All the problems have already been solved.  Going into space is not a big thing now days.

I suggest you to read about the Chinese Space Program. "Russians did it" is far from the known facts:

* The man that allowed it to get started is Qian Xuesen. The guy was a rocket technology pioneer in ... USA ! He was trained there and did significant research on the topic there, no less than a founding member of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. During the 1950's Red Scare, he was pretty much harassed. He called it a quit and went back to China, where he was given unlimited budget and anything he wanted to build rockets.

* The Space Program is fully in the hands of the PLA, which tends to be far more competent than anything civilian, in China.

* Chinese rockets use old trusted technologies over fancy high performance & fickle technologies. For example, for 1st and 2nd stage, they use UDMH & nitrogen-based propellant. 60's/70's tech, simple but easier to burn than kerosen. It's what North-Korean use too. Only rockets under development, not flown yet are going to use more modern kerosen & oxygen fuels. That makes reliability less of a problem, but it's increases the cost. As a result, those rockets are more expensive to build and launch, than rockets used for commercial launch.

* Even now, space is not easy, unlike some wrote here. However, the achievements of the Chinese Space program were 1960's milestones (checkout Gemini & Vostok milestones). It's hard, but now it's mostly "throwing money at the problem". Actually, the whole control part is lighter & easier nowadays, thanks to electronic progress since the 1960's. A tiny ATMega microcontroller is more powerful than the many kilos of the Apollo's computer, but cost less than 20 RMB a piece.

I've had this argument with others before, there are tons of capable people here who would stand out at any company in the world. Just not a lot as a % of the total and they don't do things where they would interact with your average ESL expat.

The capable people here have followed the money. They're working in finance, technology, engineering, and the sciences. Of course there are nepotism hires there too...but mixed in are the talented people who do the real work.

I obviously don't know the OPs situation and he may well know a lot of people in the industries i've mentioned, but just in general the ESL industry on the local side isn't going to attract the best and brightest. Ditto blue collar tradesmen to an even bigger extent. I don't think english majors are the top of the totem pole in ability at the student level. The type of people you see flipping around on phones out in public are gonna tend to be the unemployed or people working in retail or similar stuff. 

You're asking "why are all these people idiots?!" and then naming groups of idiots as examples. It's selection bias. I'm sure if I was a teacher i'd probably be mostly interacting with lazy english major students, young local women seeking boyfriends, unmotivated HR staff at the schools, and blue collar workmen sent to fix things at my apartment too. Why WOULD a motivated, effective person be handling visa for ESL teachers at some school?

Don't get me wrong this place is chock full of retards, but the smart people are there. You probably just don't have much chance to come across them.

The thing about the extremely talented and intelligent Chinese people is that they tend to leave China. Like expatlife26 mentioned, there are quite a few highly intelligent Chinese people... and I am quite certain they loathe the idiots as much as we do.

However, they have learned from a young age what many of us know that China is not a good place to utilize and support their intelligence and talents. Many of the most talented Chinese I know, travel abroad and come back for various reasons but don't consider China their home base because it is too unstable.

So I assume most have become businessmen, work at top manageent for very successful companies (both travel extensively) or scientists that are controlled by the government that are NOT ALLOWED to interact with foreigners. I think that pretty much sums it up.

My hypothesis is that China is a society based on female attractiveness run rampant. The men only matter if they have money, so they are destined to a life of monotonous work and disgruntlement. They have little options to develop their own style or significance, as money is the only thing that matters. Philosophy, technology and hard sciences are foreign magics that they copy from abroad.
It's really striking how passive and feminine Chinese culture is, really. Even the government has an attitude of 'marrying into' western technology and prosperity, whilst also being the self-obsessed diva terrorizing the family.
The culture is obsessed with mianzi/face/appearances and guanxi/connections, and shows no consideration to the damage to people and the environment. Government and people elbow themselves into all sorts of relationships, only to default and betray by design. It will be interesting to see how the world chooses to handle the disruptive China element: It is exploiting our human kindness as a weakness, forcing us to discriminate against Chinese in the future. Perhaps the world will never tire of China's miniskirt of mystery, but we will definitely learn to treat a compulsive scammer differently.

You omit one important factor. China has A LOT of people, it is a curse, but it is also an immense advantage as soon you talk competitiveness.

Sure each of them is probably terribly inefficient compared to your average Western worker, but when the government or companies want something to be built ASAP, they just throw 10000 construction workers at it, all paid minimum wage (peanuts), other countries can't do that, except India maybe. When they want a new technology to be developed, they just throw 10000 scientists on the project, and so on.

Chinese only learn what they need to make more money or pass exams. They have no desire to broaden their horizon because there are no groups of discussion, no brainstorming, no critical talks, no debates in China.

If the government still fails at developing a new technology, it will look at what other countries/companies have and invite some of them to expand in the massive Chinese market in exchange for technological transfers, no company will refuse considering the size of the market. Once they have a working production chain for that technology they have no need for that foreign company anymore and will BS around to get rid of them, like for e.g. exposing some corruption scandal and banning it from China, even though everyone in China is corrupt to the bone.

China hasn't invented much since the compass more than a thousand years ago. Since the opening they relied on technology transfers, then local companies changed the logo on some products to claim it as their own, that's about it.