This is a rather good explainer about China’s manufacturing layout, and why certain industries seem to cluster around specific cities.
I think many US cities were shaped like this: Detroit, Pittsburgh, Seattle etc. and largely for the same reason, and I think a lot of them still echo their manufacturing past. But none of them are at the widespread scale that we find in China any more. And this is yet another reason why it’s exceedingly difficult to replicate China’s manufacturing capacity in the US today. It’s not just money; it’s millions of people arranging their lives around manufacturing.
