There are many things that China does not have, although it may have aspirations, but there is one thing that it does have: manpower, womanpower, peoplepower.  Thus, although China is behind the times in technology and capital equipment, the sheer size of the available labor force, sometimes, makes up for the lacks.

For example, in the winter of 2008 when there were unexpected snow and ice storms, one could see film on the TV news showing thousands of soldiers breaking ice and shoveling snow to open major highways by hand.  In building the 8 lane highway over a mountain pass to the east of Guangzhou, I would often see many men using jackhammers, instead of the heavy equipment that I would see in similar work, in the U.S.

Recently, I saw a 4 story building being demolished, by hand, by 10 men with sledgehammers.  That one really mad me blink and think about how much available labor there is, here, in China.