China - Thought Leader

In the last 2 years, China has shown  leadership in 2 very different areas.  Both times it acted in ways that seemed, at the time, strange, gauche to the rest of the world. And within a month, the world was following its footsteps.

Now let's come to the two things. Going in a reverse chronological order, let's point out the way China handled the epidemic Coronavirus.  The West was aghast at China for literally locking up Wuhan province and its citizens. The democratic countries till February 2020 thought that freedom of citizens was an important factor to be considered while fighting the virus.

We now see Italy, Spain, UK, USA Switzerland scrambling while China has finished its show and is watching. The West has started to lock up, doing something that China thought of did much earlier.

The second thing I want to mention is unlike Corona, not many may recall China's contribution to the issue. And this issue is just 1 to 2 years old. 

So let's expand on it.

This is about Boeing 737 Max. (Read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX)
An Indonesian airline flying that aircraft crashed killing everyone in it in Oct 2018. While everyone was scrambling to locate the CVR (Cockpit Voice Recorder) and decode the information, in March 2019 an Ethiopian airlines flying the same Boeing 737 Max aircraft crashed killing everyone in board.

As usual, FAA and various governments were trying to figure out the CVR. 

China was the first country which, out of the blue, took a decision to ground all the 737 Max aircrafts in order to prevent any future accidents. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX_groundings)

Within a month, most airlines followed China's decision. 

In both cases, Boeing 737 Max and coronavirus (in chronological and alphabetical order) China's decision had been stunning initially and left the world shocked. And within a few weeks to months, others followed suit.

Is China really the place which only makes cheap trinkets?