China has better infrastructure and lower levels of graft than other low-cost countries, this is what has kept it competitive.
Not sure what the point of China needing to create '10,000 apples' is. If manufacturing jobs are needed better to work for the existing Apple, maybe?
Or maybe the point is that China needs to create global brands to stay competitive? This may or may not be true but without metrics it is just one person's opinion.
And China has already started creating global brands.
"In 2010 the Haier brand had the world's largest market share in white goods, with 6.1 per cent" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haier
"In Q2 2011, Lenovo was the third largest vendor of personal computers in the world." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenovo
... etc