Here's a question in response: would China have seen such a huge reduction in povery if it didn't offer cheap labour in the first place?

The main draw for foreign investment, capital inflow and trade, I would argue, was: (a) heavy investment in its stock of "hard" capital assets (i.e., great infrastructure); plus (b) an army of people willing to work for wages far lower than the countries making those investments (but generally higher than most of those people were making in agrarian sector).

This is arguably one of the most important (and complex) things for the world to understand well. There are billions more people around the world who haven't been able to escape poverty whose futures really depend on getting these kinds of policies right.