Nezha 2 had a budget of 80 million while Inside Out had a budget of 200 million. There are several other examples where Asian animations with a lower budget and with the same quality as American animations manage to achieve the same results or even be superior.
It’s why a lot of American cartoons like The Simpsons or Futurama are animated in Asia, usually Japan or Korea. They might have American animators do the key frames and then pay Asian animators to do the tedious in-between frames, or just send it all to Asia.
This also puts a downward pressure on American wages, with the threat effectively being, “take a pay cut or lose the work entirely.” Seems to be what Hollywood is hoping to do with “AI” also.