Looks as if you're receiving a decent number of downvotes (I upvoted) for expressing some truthiness mixed with too much vitriol.
>Who cares about unintended consequences if you're
>the first person to study them?
Everyone with a sense of ethics, morals and humanity. But that's an answer to a useless question. Are the expected costs of unintended, likely or allowed consequences less than the expected benefits? If so, then states and societies will press ahead as was done with nuclear weapons, bio-weapons, aircraft, rocketry, etc. With exploration comes understanding and sets of ethics for each were developed to guide those inventions.
>China gets to deal with a novel problem
Maybe. I don't think we have 100% certainty that positive results will ever be obtained. Millions of years of evolution have not eliminated harmful mutation from reproduction: mutation has been reduced to a low enough level to allow ongoing propagation (birth defects) and survival (cancer) but is certainly not as low as (Western human-judged) ethical and moral values would like.
>China will get novel rewards eventually
>because the west let itself get soft
My inclination is to agree with the sentiment (if not the vitriol) of your statement but I'm wavering a bit as I learn more about the complexity and messiness. Of course, the US "pushed" ethical and moral bounds when exploring nuclear technology, chemical warfare, bio warfare, missile technologies, etc. Some of those turned out to be existential threats and loosening ethical and moral values might have been warranted by guaranteeing the existence of our society. But most of them turned out not to be existential threats but instead reasonably nice long-term economic benefits.
While I don't think every child should get-a-trophy-for-participation, I'm not sure we should loosen our ethical and moral standards to pursue genetic engineering. A legit question is: other states will pursue genetic engineering aggressively and how do we respond?
And the result is likely not binary: winning this race does not produce world domination; winning is likely a temporary (10-50 year?), slight technological advantage. Even serious existential threats, such as nuclear weapons, were leaked and duplicated by competing states. And those were rare, easily identifiable items (big atomic or nuclear bombs). Exfiltrating a key genetic engineering masterpiece can be done invisibly with a comb or razor in a checked-bag...
And being a second-mover can be a huge advantage. Just ask Japan (PHS), Africa (mobile-first/only), Hong Kong (cable internet), Chattanooga (utility internet), etc. First movers can over-invest in being the first mover and suffer when advantages of scale, learning or technology kick in. The "center" of the tech world (Silicon Valley) had the worst Internet service in the developed world; but we had the best 1970's phone and cable service on the planet.