China made a large effort to woo western companies to manufacture there. Afaik they built special economic zones, it was a deliberate effort by the govt. If it all happened by accident then why didn’t manufacturing move to India? Both China and India moved to the GATT at the same time afaik.

Manufacturing didn't move to India largely because their quality wasn't good enough. There's no need to make it more complicated than that.

Of course China tried to attract foreign investment. Describing that as

> Chinese strategic efforts to locate our industrial production there

makes it sound like some sort of conspiracy to undermine the US. It was normal economic policy, of the type practiced by most countries.

> This wasn't some sort of nefarious Chinese plot.

No need to put 'nefarious' in there, or 'plot' even, but it was a goal. If not, then why did they want to join the WTO so badly?

They wanted to join the WTO so that their exports wouldn't be subject to high tariffs and other barriers.

The issue is that there were no

> Chinese strategic efforts to locate our industrial production there

There was a Chinese policy of encouraging foreign investment, but that's not a strategic plan to remove another country's industrial capacity, which is how OP framed it.