It`s just the way the world works. A country`s economy ramps up off the back of cheap manufacturing on a huge scale, workers suffer, money pours in - the country runs the world for a bit. Then the general level of sophistication in the population improves, pretty soon they start fretting about the working conditions and standard of living and before you know it manufacturing starts to get expensive, heavy industry shuts down, empire collapses and some other place takes over.
